Sacrosanct
by ncfan
Summary: Yasuda Sayo on gender, magic and death.
1. Songs of Magic

I own nothing.

* * *

"…_Let it be heard. I am one yet many. What I speak is our tale. However, this is a small world, sealed by glass and cork, with no one to hear. None shall lay eyes upon it, and my entire tale shall be sealed away, set adrift in the sea of my heart until it disappears along with the seaweed…"_

-Clair vauxof Bernard, EP7

-0-0-0-

Yasuda Sayo often had occasion to go to the Director of the Fukuin House over her own loneliness.

You see, the Fukuin House was a sad place for those children (mostly girls, but there were some boys there as well) who had no relatives, or had no relatives who were willing to take care of them. It was natural that a small child, upon realizing her situation, would be sad. After all, her parents were dead, and as for the rest of her family, either they were dead, or they had simply decided that she was not worth the burden. Surely that must have been how it was for Sayo. She was so frail and puny that she was too much a burden for her poor family, so they gave her over to this sad house. It was only natural that she would be sad, though she knew she should not blame her family for giving up such a frail kid like her.

The Director taught her how to see angels.

"I know your sadness, Sayo. It must surely be imprinted upon your soul. But you must understand that you are never alone. We live in a world full of angels, Sayo. They are always praying for your happiness."

"A world full of angels? But why can't I see them…"

"Oh, child, you only look at the world with your eyes. Once you try to see an angel with your eyes, you never will see them; the touch of human eyes will burn an angel's skin. You must instead look with the eyes of your heart."

"…M-my heart…"

"Yes, Sayo. God looks down on us all from golden heaven. The whole world is filled with God's love. You see it manifested in the small blessings of daily life. God is here with us, but if you try to look at the world with naught but your rational eyes, you will never 'see' God, nor will you see His angels.

"It is with your heart that you believe in God, and with the eyes of your heart, you will quietly understand. Your will not 'look'; you shall 'see', and the love of your heart will give them shape.

With the eyes of her heart, Sayo saw many things. But sometimes, she wondered why she only ever saw witches, and never angels.

-0-0-0-

There was something wrong about her.

Oh, Sayo wasn't a good servant, she knew that. She was much too young and frail and clumsy to ever be a good servant, and she was dragging the other girls down with her. That must be why they always called her 'Yasu' instead of Sayo or her blessed name Shannon, even when they knew that she hated being called by the surname-given name amalgamation that many of them used. That must be why they would leave her in the chapel to find her missing supplies by herself even when it was growing dark and she was so scared of being scolded that her hands were shaking. That must be why they always looked at her so coldly and treated her like she was a burden. She _was_ a burden after all.

And that must have been why Madam was so impatient with her, because Sayo was such a poor servant. Madam was a strict taskmaster, a perfectionist; she demanded nothing less than the best. And the dignity of the Ushiromiya family was such a weighty thing that of course Madam didn't want it sullied by something so small as a clumsy servant. Of course Madam was so impatient with her. Who wouldn't be?

She would have to find a way to get better. Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, they were the kindest of all to her, and they told her that she would get better as she got older. But until then, Sayo knew that she would just have to work harder than everyone else so that they could see that she really was taking this seriously.

"_Geez, why did we get stuck with this stupid kid?"_

"_This is sloppy work. Clean it again. Don't stop until you get it right!"_

"_Yasu! Quit dawdling! What, did you forget your key again?! What's Madam going to say?!"_

"_God, why did we get stuck with her?"_

(Sayo had the feeling, sometimes, that nothing she did would ever be good enough. That even if she was perfect, they would still think she was stupid and clumsy and sloppy and not-good-enough, they would never see her as anything but that. She told herself to forget it, that of course they would see that she could do a good job if she could just figure out _how_ to do a good job. It wasn't their faults, after all, that she was so clumsy and careless.)

And she knew it must have looked like she was getting special treatment. After all, Sayo was working as a servant to the Ushiromiya family, the most prestigious appointment a dependent of the Fukuin House could receive, several years earlier than most children could expect, and even though she was supposed to give her schoolwork the most focus, she was still receiving full pay. She couldn't even do most of a servant's chores! On top of that, she had been given a room by herself when everyone else had to share a room on Rokkenjima with one or two other servants, and the senior servants, Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, both seemed to go easy on her in ways they didn't go easy on any of the other girls from the Fukuin House. Sayo had always been warned that when people didn't get equal shares, resentment would follow. But she wasn't being given special treatment, really. She had to work just as hard as everyone else, and Madam came down on her twice as hard. It just looked like she was being treated better than the other girls.

There was something wrong with her in other ways, too.

Sayo sat on the edge of her bed, flicking long strands of pale hair away from her shoulders. It was so empty, this room, in comparison to the one she'd had at the Fukuin House, the one she still used on the weekends, but she did not long for the place where she had been brought up. The sense of alienation and isolation from others had been just as strong there. No one wanted to play with Sayo, that strange and sickly little kid who was always so feeble and given to dark dreams. They could sense the wrongness about her, she guessed.

Sayo didn't feel like a girl should. She knew what girls were supposed to be like, of course. They were supposed to be graceful and pretty, delicate and yet quick-witted, clever enough to live their lives without stumbling. That was what a proper girl, a proper woman, was supposed to be like.

And yet, Sayo wasn't anything like that. She didn't look good in a dress; the fabric inevitably sat wrong on her shoulders and around her hips. The bones stuck out too much from her elbows and her wrists and her knees. She wasn't graceful; everybody already knew that. Sayo was such a clumsy servant, so no one was surprised when she proved to be utterly graceless as a girl, too. And Sayo wasn't pretty like Milady or some of the older girls. She had long, lank blonde hair that was already, slowly but surely, starting to turn some dank, mousy shade of brown from spending most of her day inside. Her limbs were disproportionately slender in comparison to the rest of her body; there was no strength in them at all, and she tired so quickly. Sayo wasn't clever or quick-witted at all, either; how could she lose stuff as often as she did if she had a good head on her shoulders?

(Sayo told herself that the witch Beatrice was pranking her on account of her carelessness. The witch who lived in the darkness between patches of light just waited for someone to lay down a key or a broom and take their eyes off of it. If they did that for even one second, Beatrice would open up a portal to her shadow world and take the forgotten thing for her own. Sayo had seen her do it, in the chapel.

It was easier to tell herself that than to admit just how careless she was. It was easier for Sayo to pretend that she was being picked on by a witch—who had since become Sayo's uneasy friend—than to admit that she frequently mislaid objects and couldn't spot them afterwards even when they were there in plain sight. If she tied her keys to bits of string in her pockets, it was easier to pretend to believe what Kumasawa-san had told her, that the string was like a spider web and repel the witch, than to admit that she was so thoughtless that she needed to tie her belongings down.)

That was what Shannon was for, Sayo supposed.

Though she was a young girl and, in her situation, it would have been perfectly understandable for her to create and believe in imaginary friends, Sayo never harbored any illusions about exactly what Shannon was. If she indulged in illusions, she was always careful never to stick her head below the surface of the water; if Sayo was afraid of anything, she was afraid of drowning.

Shannon was not an imaginary friend so much as she was an image. It would not be until many years later that Sayo remembered her as bearing the appearance she did as a teenager, but as a child, Sayo did indeed imagine Shannon as being what Sayo might look like when she was older. But different. Shannon was pretty, and calm and confident and self-assured. Shannon was graceful and competent, always kind, never spiteful or mean-spirited. She never mislaid keys; she always did a good job on the dusting. She went to bed early and rose before dawn. She was never tired or lazy, never gossiped or treated others rudely. Shannon was the model servant, beloved by all. She was the ideal girl, the ideal woman. She was everything Sayo was not, everything Sayo longed to be.

Sayo conjured Shannon's image beside her, the shade upon whom she had bestowed her blessed name, and imagined what she could be.

And wished that, for one moment, she could feel comfortable in her skin.

-0-0-0-

Sayo had hoped that, when the servant girls who had served alongside her when she started were to leave, she could make a good impression upon the girls who came afterwards. (And Sayo said girls because, really, Madam seemed to prefer female servants and had instructed Genji to choose them over the boys. The number of boys who had been selected from the Fukuin House in all the time that the orphanage and the Ushiromiya family had had their arrangement could be counted on one hand.) Kumasawa-san had always encouraged Sayo to work hard for this reason. Whenever the little girl was sad or depressed, Kumasawa-san told her that the girls who came to Rokkenjima in the future, even those who were older than her, would look up to Sayo if she could just give off the impression of a calm, competent servant. Even Genji-sama told Sayo that it was her responsibility to help the new girls.

For that reason, among others, Sayo had worked hard. She had been very careful not to lose sight of things and give Beatrice any reason to play keep-away with her belongings. She had always been careful to be as thorough as she could be in her cleaning (And if she did occasionally do a slapdash job, she told herself she would do better tomorrow). Sayo had tried so hard to be what Shannon was, to gain the respect of Madam and Krauss-sama and Master, to gain the respect of the other girls from the Fukuin House.

"…_Don't call me Yasu! I hate being called that."_

_One of the girls, Sanon, spared her a backwards glance, but there was only scorn in her gaze._

Sayo had wanted to make a good impression on the new girls who were coming, but that could not be. The older girls had already gotten these two new ones believing that she was a clumsy, dim-witted kid who lost things all the time and couldn't do anything right—Sayo couldn't help but feel a little sad that they had never gotten past their first impression of her (_But why would I even want to be friends with them?_). Shannon just told her to forget it and move on without holding any grudges. Sayo would try for that.

On top of that, the new girls weren't exactly the cream of the crop. There was not a hint of nervousness in Asune or Berune, not a trace of the gravity that servants of the Ushiromiya family should have been possessed of. Sayo had sometimes heard rumors that unsuitable kids could pass the adults' inspections by behaving the way they knew they wanted the Ushiromiya family's prospective servants to behave. It was uncharitable of her, she knew, but she wondered if Berune and Asune had done that.

And of course, they didn't take Sayo seriously at all, not about being diligent, nor about the Witch. They were instead all too ready to mock the way Kinzo wailed Beatrice's name and giggle behind their hands at Sayo's seriousness.

"_Who does she think she's kidding? Shina and Hoshi told me all about her; she's the most forgetful girl the Ushiromiya family's ever taken on as a servant! We're way better than Yasu."_

Then, one day, Berune left her master key ring lying on a bed, and completely forgot about it.

Sayo swallowed hard on the angry lump in her throat when she saw it. She knew she shouldn't be angry, not with Berune—if she was to be angry with anyone, let it be with herself. If Berune couldn't take her job as a servant of the Ushiromiya family seriously, it was Sayo's responsibility to make her see how important this was, and if Berune persisted in being careless, it was Sayo's fault. Sayo hadn't wanted to be as harsh with Berune and Asune as the older girls had been with her, but it seemed that the soft touch wasn't doing any good.

Berune really needed to be taught a lesson…

It was ironic to think that it had been in the chapel that Sayo had first been tempted by the Witch's power. Objects disappearing and reappearing so far from their natural place that they could not possibly have gotten there by accident. Was it the prank of a human, or the magic of a Witch? Beatrice, dressed all in red, sneering demonically, hovered over Berune's shoulder and winked at Sayo.

_Come on. You know you want to do it. Give them a taste of what it's like to be the one who loses things. You'd wanted to do it to Runon that one time. She glared at you afterwards, grinding her teeth after being humiliated in front of Genji-sama. Even though it was her own fault, she blamed you in her heart and treated you cruelly for days. In spite of all her ill treatment of you, you couldn't help but feel a little satisfied that it was someone else being scolded for once._

The thoughts were uncharitable. But they weren't about to go away.

Hiding the whole key ring would be too obvious; Sayo had learned from her mystery novels that small tricks were better. While Berune and Asune's backs were turned, she slid one of the keys off of the key ring and stowed it in her pocket. It wasn't easy; the ring was stiff and Sayo had always had trouble with them. But somehow, she was able to get the key off without Berune noticing.

It felt…

It felt good.

The hairs on Sayo's arms and the back of her neck all stood on end. Her skin prickled; she felt as though jolts of electricity were replacing the blood in her veins. Not once had Sayo ever tried to influence the world in this way before, and it felt better than she could have imagined. As Berune realized that her key was gone, and she wheeled around to accuse Sayo, Sayo merely stared at her calmly, and projected out the thought: _I was not responsible. The Witch, Beatrice-sama, has taken your key as punishment for your carelessness and your lack of respect._

_Yasuda Sayo did not take your key._

Was this what it was like to use magic? To have power over people who trampled on her (No, no, no, that was an unkind thought)? Asune watched on skeptically, but Berune's expression gradually changed from one of anger… to fear. She was afraid of Beatrice. If Sayo tried hard enough, she could believe that Berune was afraid of her. And well she should be.

_Beatrice-sama has taken your key, as punishment for your carelessness and your disrespect of her name and her power._

After all, Yasuda Sayo had just become a Witch. Yasuda Sayo had just become Beatrice.

Lying alone in the dark of her room, listening to the rain drum on the roof and splatter against the windows, Sayo made some alterations to her characters. She was rather bored of being a servant. Once, long ago, she had aspired to be like Shannon, to be the model servant, the model woman. She was rather bored of being a human, too. The gray days all ran together; schoolwork, chores, schoolwork, chores. They were occasionally (or rather more often than the word 'occasionally' implied) punctuated by being yelled at by Madam.

In reality, Sayo was still a servant. She knew that. She knew it wasn't going to change any time soon, that there wasn't anything she could do to change it. It was in her best interests to aspire to be like that image of herself she had always affixed Shannon's name to. But a servant's work was so _boring_. There was nothing fulfilling about it, when Sayo never received any acknowledgement or praise of her hard work. Madam never noticed that she was working hard, never praised her; she only noticed mistakes, and yelled at Sayo over those. She could clean the whole mansion by herself without anyone else's help, and Madam would never notice. But if she forgot to dust one windowsill, she'd be shouted at until her ears rang.

Sayo had tasted magic. She had touched the world, instead of just watching it pass her by. For one moment, for one breathtaking moment, she had felt powerful. As a servant, Sayo would never have any of her efforts acknowledged, nor have any of her hard work praised. But maybe as a Witch, if she could convince others of her presence, her power, things could be different…

Smiling wistfully, Sayo summoned up Shannon's image to sit on the bed beside her. "I… I'm sorry, Shannon. I guess I can't become like you after all."

She still wanted to be liked and loved as a servant, but that wasn't where the lion's share of Sayo's efforts was going to go anymore.

And she wasn't just going to have Beatrice as a friend; Sayo was going to _be_ Beatrice. She would still keep Shannon, and the old Beatrice, who would have to be nameless for now. They were her friends, after all, even if they were only characters she had made up. There was love in their creations, and how could she throw that away?

But 'Beatrice' would need a new look. Beatrice's big sister-like friend would keep her appearance, that of the demoness with the blood-red dress and golden curls; Sayo didn't want to steal that from her. Now, the Beatrice whom Sayo was to be needed to look different from the old Beatrice, _very_ different, so that the two would not be confused for one another.

Sayo shut her eyes, and imagined swimming amongst a pitch-black sea of stars and planets and comets with glittering tails as she thought of what she would become.

Sayo hit upon a solution from all the stories she had heard of Beatrice from Kumasawa-san. She was seen as a white shadow haunting the halls of the Rokkenjima mansion at night. A white specter… Beatrice would be a Witch who was like a ghost, dressed all in white.

She would have an elegant white dress, and a strong, noble look to her face. She would be lovely, beautiful, even, but her mouth would quickly curl into a sneer as the tell of her mercurial nature. The tone she took would often be rude and overly direct. Beatrice was, after all, like a queen, answerable to no one; why should Beatrice speak in submissive tones?

This new Beatrice would be tall and graceful. She would have vivid blue eyes, not like Sayo's dishwater blue-gray eyes. Her hair would be shining white, not like Sayo's fading-to-brown blonde hair. For all of her rudeness, she would possess all of a lady's graces. She would be possessed of a terrible dignity to match the reputation of the Witch who had given Kinzo all of his gold and captured his mind in the throes of obsession.

And she would have immense power, if others would just believe in her.

To become Beatrice was as being reborn.

"_Let us modify the world."_

"_Oh, I am one yet many."_

Now, the form of her magic would have to change. It was Beatrice's friend who made small items disappear and then reappear in places they could not have gotten to by accident. Sayo imagined gold butterflies, appropriate for a Witch who had given Ushiromiya Kinzo ten tons of gold. Sayo would keep a Witch's traditional weaknesses, spider webs and mirrors. It seemed only fair that a Witch should have weaknesses, and a mirror really was a weakness. She didn't like mirrors. No matter how much she pretended, they always showed her pitiful self.

The home of Beatrice now was to be the VIP room on the second floor of the mansion.

Sayo would spend many nights imagining the sort of world Beatrice lived in.

Beatrice was her secret, her best-loved secret. As Beatrice, she was powerful. She was not a hapless, timid servant whom everyone looked down upon, but a powerful Witch. She could make even the most stalwart tremble. And others would know of her. Pranks on the servants who took the night shift were the best. But it wasn't mean-spirited. Because she wasn't Shannon, the kind and lonely servant who just wanted to do her best and have her hard work acknowledged. She was Beatrice, the fickle, thousand-year-old Witch who ruled Rokkenjima's night. If all she decided to do to a servant was pull a harmless prank on them, they should be glad. They all knew the stories of worse that had happened. Everyone knew the story of the servant who had fallen from a cliff and died, long ago.

And when someone spoke the name of Beatrice with terrified reverence, Sayo smiled.


	2. Dreamer, Dream

_Dreamer, Dream_

* * *

Sayo was bored of being a servant, a human. To be these things and nothing else meant to live out the same procession of gray, fruitless days indefinitely—who knew when she would be able to leave the island, as young as she was? She was destined to be bound to Rokkenjima, to be a servant of the Ushiromiya family, for the foreseeable future. She was doomed to the same routine. Why not seek respite, seek some variation on the endless gray days? Her mystery novels were part of it, but she could only seek them out on breaks or in the evenings after she had finished all of her homework and afternoon chores.

So she had become a Witch. She had conjured Beatrice out of the nothingness of her subconscious just as she had conjured Shannon. As Beatrice, Sayo could touch the world, could touch the lives of those around her in a way that only she controlled. She felt… powerful. As Shannon, she could only ever be what she was—a servant, a human with no power to change anything. No one could have blamed her for wanting to be Beatrice more than she wanted to be Shannon.

Maybe she should have tried to find greater balance between her two personas instead.

"Honestly, I should think that after all of your time here you would understand what is expected of you! This is not a place where you can simply slack off and expect to get by! You are being paid to _work_, Shannon. I expect you to work!"

Madam was in a bad mood again, rubbing her forehead with one hand and planting the other on her hip. She had that scrunched-up look on her face that often accompanied one of her notorious migraines. Sayo couldn't help but feel sorry for Madam when she got her headaches; she shuddered to think of the way she herself would feel if she was in pain and none of the medicine in the world was enough to make the pain go away. And Sayo knew that pain could make an otherwise kindly person behave in ways that they never would normally.

Madam was in a bad mood again, and it was Sayo's fault. It was Sayo's fault that she was in a bad mood, and it was probably her fault as well that Madam had a migraine. To Sayo, it always felt like it was her fault when Madam was in a bad mood or had a migraine, even when it had nothing to do with her.

And if Sayo was being yelled at, it wasn't on account of anything Asune or Berune had done. She had been yelled at by Madam on account of her fellow servants' mishaps before. Berune had gotten better since she had had her key stolen, but Asune was just as careless as ever (even if she didn't disrespect Beatrice-sama's name, even if Beatrice stole her things on occasion, Asune never took the legend seriously, a source of endless frustration for Sayo), and Berune still had her slips, even when she had more respect for Beatrice. It would have still been her fault if it was because of Asune or Berune. Sayo, though several years younger than the other two Fukuin House servants, _was_ their senior, after all; she had been serving here longer than they had, and she was supposed to catch and correct any of their missteps _before_ Madam saw them.

But this time, Sayo was being yelled at and Madam was in pain and in a bad mood on account of something that was entirely and only Sayo's fault. Today, it was Sayo's job to dust the windowsills on the first floor. Since she was still little, even if she wasn't as little as she had been when she first started working here (if she just figured out the right things to eat, she'd probably be stronger, but she hadn't, so she wasn't), she wasn't given strenuous assignments. Dusting the windowsills was one of the easiest assignments a servant could be given, along with arranging flowers and taking towels back to the bathrooms after they'd been washed.

Sayo knew that dusting the windowsills was an easy assignment. She knew it was being given to her because she was so feeble, that allowances were being made for her _yet again_. It wasn't special treatment, but allowances were being made for her, nonetheless. Sayo knew also that Madam had never been terribly happy about such a child who couldn't do all of a servant's chores being among the girls who came here from the Fukuin House. She knew that Madam wasn't happy about the whispered implications that Sayo was just here to be a friend to Milady, and had insisted that Sayo do as much work as possible so that she really would be earning her keep here, rather than just being some tagalong kid trailing after the older servants.

And yet…

And yet she had missed some of the windowsills, today.

Sayo squeezed her eyes shut, keeping her head bowed. Not looking Madam in the eye, keeping her head bowed in her presence, that was only polite, but there was more than politeness to it today. Anyone, even those who stumbled on to this situation with no knowledge of what was going on, could have seen her shame, could have felt it radiating off of her. "My apologies, Madam," she said in a small voice.

Since her eyes were shut, Sayo heard rather than saw Natsuhi suck in a deep, ragged breath. "Apologizing doesn't make it right, Shannon. Apologizing does _not_ change the fact that you have been derelict in your duties."

Sayo bit her lip so hard that she drew blood. _But if I didn't apologize, you'd scold me for not showing proper remorse. _She quelled that thought before she could even think of voicing it aloud. It was her fault…

It really was her fault. She had been daydreaming when she should have been focusing all of her attention on cleaning. Images of some more friends and servants for Beatrice had popped into her head, you see, and she couldn't resist trying to think about what they looked like and what they would talk like and act like. She was also trying to think up a name for Beatrice's oldest friend, the big sister-like demoness who had been Beatrice before Sayo had given the name to another. She was thinking about 'Anne'; that was the name of her favorite character from _Persuasion_ (Mystery novels weren't the _only_ books Sayo read, even if they were her favorites). After a while, Sayo had realized that, no, that really wasn't the best name for Beatrice's oldest friend; that person was too lively for the name 'Anne', especially with a namesake like Anne Elliot.

_And there I go again. I'm thinking about all of this when I should just be focusing on my work._

"If you want to stay here—" Madam almost spoke as though she had any say about whether Sayo stayed or went when both Master and Genji-sama had insisted that she be accepted here "—you need to learn proper diligence. As punishment for your carelessness…" Sayo couldn't resist; she looked up into Madam's face, which was still scrunched up, still partially covered by the hand that she used to rub her forehead. "…You are to dust _every_ windowsill in the mansion, on the first, second and third floors. No one is allowed to help you—not Asune or Berune or Kumasawa-san or Genji-san. I will supervise you, and you are to do this until you _get it right_." The last three words of that sentence almost came out as a snarl.

As Sayo dusted the windowsills, Madam did indeed supervise her closely. She hovered at her shoulder, hands on her hips, and scolded her soundly whenever she did a substandard job dusting, though she never actually showed Sayo a better way to dust.

About halfway through the windowsills on the first floor, Sayo chanced a backwards glance at Sayo. Madam was barely watching her at all, her head bowed. She was leaning against a wall, still rubbing her forehead with her hand, but now she was letting her hand cover up much more of her face than before, obscuring her eyes from view. Her other arm was draped about her front. Her shoulders were hunched, her mouth crammed into some thin, jagged line.

It hurt to see.

Being scolded by Madam was like being scolded by her own mother. Sayo supposed that she had parent figures of a kind in Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, Kumasawa-san being the kind, understanding mother figure and Genji-sama the distant, remote, but still kind in his own way father figure. But they were of an age to be Sayo's grandparents, especially Genji-sama, who was around the same age as Master.

Sayo supposed that she must look up to Madam the way a child might look up to her mother. Madam was, after all, young enough to be Sayo's mother, being the mother of a child only a few years older than Sayo herself. And Madam… Sayo was always trying to impress Madam. That wasn't always the thought at the forefront of her mind, but she was always hoping that Madam would acknowledge her efforts, would acknowledge how hard she was trying to be a good servant. And when she thought about it, Sayo realized that she was hoping for Madam to acknowledge her more than she was for Master or Krauss-sama. After all, Madam was the supervisor of the servants; Madam was the one who appraised their work.

Which was probably why moments like this made Sayo want to curl up into a ball and wither away.

She felt absolutely pathetic. During moments like this, Sayo didn't feel like a servant of the Ushiromiya family. She felt like a little girl playing dress-up in clothes that were far too grown-up for her, what with her half-corset and slit skirt and prim black shoes. And there she was, being scolded pitilessly by her mother for some mistake, but there was no warmth in that scolding, no hint of love. It was the kind of scolding a pathetic little girl like Sayo got when she was being scolded by someone who barely tolerated her presence in her home. It was moments like this when Sayo felt like she would never have her efforts acknowledged, by anyone.

_But she's so kind to Milady Jessica. Always, even when she's being stern with her. Why isn't she kind with me as well?_

_Oh._

_That's right._

_I'm not her child. I'm just an orphan from the Fukuin House. I'm just a servant. I'm just a nuisance._

It was true that Sayo wished for Beatrice to be acknowledged. That was why she would sometimes slip out of bed and play pranks on those servants on the night shift, late at night, even if she was horribly tired the following morning. But that didn't meant that she didn't want her efforts as a human being acknowledged too, even as bored as she was with it all.

Having acknowledgement was better than being constantly chastised for her failings.

Sayo did not finish her punishment to Madam's satisfaction until after dark, by which point Madam was in an even worse mood because she had missed supper and her absence would surely be an embarrassment to the family. Sayo was miserably hungry when she was finally allowed to go back to the room set aside for her, but she didn't want to eat, not even the food Kumasawa-san had set aside for her. She was afraid that if she ate anything she'd be sick.

Sayo took her bath in silence, enduring Asune and Berune's sniggers in the washroom outside of the bathroom with ears she tried her best to deafen. Even though she was the most experienced girl from the Fukuin House, she still had to endure this…

For once, Sayo was grateful for her single room. In the past, she had been lonely, and had wanted company. Whose company, she wasn't sure. Kumasawa-san went home to her family on Niijima at the end of the day, Genji-sama was a man and it would have been inappropriate for him and Sayo to sleep in the same room, and it wasn't like the other girls from the Fukuin House were people she would have been glad to room with. Maybe that was just another reason she had invented Shannon, so that she could have a kind and gentle voice with her in this lonely space, so that she could imagine that there would be someone here to comfort her if she woke up unsettled after a nightmare.

It was still a lonely space. Sayo lay awake in bed in her loose pajamas, staring up at the ceiling. The room was sparse, barely furnished; the bed's mattress was thin, the sort that was deliberately thin so as not to encourage comfort in the sleeper. The floor was bare wooden slats that creaked when gusts of wind hit the mansion. That only added to the lonely mood of the room. But in a way, her humble surroundings helped her. When Sayo imagined a more lush setting, her imagination could run wild in this meager space.

She was sitting out beneath the stars. The night was warm and dry with a breeze that was strong enough to cool her skin, but gentle enough not to ruffle the inky surface of the tea in her teacup. This was the kind of weather Sayo loved the best, and it was the only weather she imagined in this place.

Beatrice's home needed to be a spectacular place, fit for a Witch who was in many ways like a queen. Sayo's imagination did draw her to somewhat familiar climes, but this could not possibly have been mistaken for the real world. Yes, they were sitting beneath a wrought-iron arbor, around a delicate wrought-iron table painted white. Yes, there was a tea pot and porcelain cups full of tea sitting on their saucers. Yes, there was a magnificent rose garden that only stopped to give way to a dense forest. This all did indeed bear a superficial resemblance to the grounds of the Ushiromiya family's estate, but it was not the same.

This arbor was much prettier than the one on the grounds, and it never got dirty or rusted. The porcelain teapot and cups and saucers would never break no matter how many times someone with clumsy hands dropped them; no one would ever have to worry about having the cost of replacing the set taken out of their pay because one piece had ended up smashed against the floor. And the patterns on the porcelain the Ushiromiya family used were usually blue-and-white checkers or faded pink flowers, or there just wasn't any pattern at all and the pieces were plain white—those were the ones Madam brought out when Sayo was the one serving tea. But the porcelain tea set was beautiful white porcelain with gold filigree around the rims, polished so brightly that Sayo could almost completely make out her reflection in them (But never entirely; even here, Sayo didn't want to see her reflection).

The roses were not the deep blood red of the Ushiromiya's rose garden, the deep red that put Sayo in mind of living playing cards painting white roses red. They were gold that glimmered in the night, visited by golden butterflies adorned with stardust. The moon, whether it was full or a crescent or a sliver like a curled clip of hair, shone with incredible brilliance. The stars were like jewels hung up in the sky, diamonds and rubies and sapphires and topaz.

Here, in this place, Sayo never felt out of place. Her clothes were all smooth and silken; they never itched or abraded her skin. Her shoes never pinched her heels or made her bleed. Her clothes always fit right, too. She never felt gawky or plain wearing dresses, never felt inadequate in comparison to anyone else here as far as her appearance went. She never felt like she was less of a girl for being a frail little thing with too much hair and skinny limbs. She never felt out of place, or unwanted.

And if the tea never had much flavor to it, and if the cookies tasted a little like sawdust, Sayo barely noticed. It was a trade-off she could make. This was the Golden Land.

Sometimes, when she was here, she would assume the guise of Beatrice—not the old Beatrice, who dressed in red, but the new one, who was as a white phantom, a proud woman, a queen. Sayo liked to take up the guise of Beatrice in this place, to imagine what it was like to wear satin gloves and have pearls strung in her hair, to have magic at her fingertips, to feel powerful. She could almost imagine that she truly wore the guise of Beatrice when she followed after some of the servants at night (never Genji-sama or Kumasawa-san, but sometimes the girls from the Fukuin House or the adult servants who didn't respect her—Beatrice's—name) and opened locked windows or slammed doors. The mirror always showed a pathetic little girl playing pranks for no good reason, but so long as she didn't see her own face, she could imagine…

Tonight, Sayo had not assumed the face of Beatrice. She came as herself, as ordinary as she might be. She was taking tea, with her three guests all sitting at the table with her.

"I'm sorry," she told Beatrice's oldest friend. "I haven't thought up a new name for you yet."

The nameless demoness shook her golden curls and smiled at Sayo. "That's alright. I don't want an unsuitable name, after all. You're right; Anne wouldn't have done for me at all, and don't even think about Alice! Just don't take too long, okay? I won't wait forever, eheh."

"You will surely win Natsuhi's favor if you persevere," Beatrice assured her, taking up her teacup with prim hands that belied the way she slouched in her chair. "The essence of magic is perseverance, the unwillingness to give up just because the world tells you that something is impossible. If you persevere, eventually Natsuhi will see how hard you've been working."

Shannon smiled her sweet, gentle smile. "Let's give it our all together," she murmured, an echo of older, simpler times.

Sayo drank her never-very-flavorful tea, and smiled shyly over the rim. It was such a comfort, to be able to seek solace here.

-0-0-0-

Sayo didn't spend all of the nights she lied awake in bed putting together the pieces of the Golden Land.

Today had been a slightly better day than usual. Asune was sick with the flu and couldn't work, so it was just Sayo and Berune handling the chores usually allotted to the servants from the Fukuin House. Given that they had to do more work than usual, you might have thought that this was a bad thing—and indeed, Sayo had gone to bed far more tired and achy than usual—but really, it wasn't.

Asune was the one who misbehaved the most during the rounds, these days. Berune had been frightened by Beatrice into doing her job as properly as she could, and with minimal fuss as well—she really was getting a lot better. Berune was also much nicer away from Asune's influence; Sayo knew that Asune was likely the way she was to her because Sayo herself didn't really cut an impressive figure as a servant, but it was still nice to have a day when she was working with someone who, on her own, was willing to listen to her and do her job.

It was a slightly better day, which meant that it had been a quiet day. Everything had gone on without incident, Madam didn't scold Sayo for being derelict in her duties, and her homework wasn't even all that hard.

Now, Sayo was lying on her back on her bed, and wondering.

Where had she come from?

Any orphan would wonder this, any child without parents, without records of them. It was easy enough to suppose that her parents simply couldn't handle the trouble of dealing with a frail, feeble child like Sayo. There were plenty of poor people in the world who could barely afford to take care of healthy children; was it so unreasonable to assume that she had been abandoned because she was a burden? She wouldn't be the only child of the Fukuin House abandoned for that reason.

But lately, it occurred to Sayo that this explanation lacked imagination. She dreamt of whole worlds far away from this one. Was it really so unreasonable to imagine that her origins might be something more exotic, more profound, than simply that of a feeble child who had been abandoned because she was too much of a burden to her parents?

Sayo had read stories, not just mysteries but other books as well, where the protagonist, an orphaned little boy or girl, turned out to be the child of a king or queen or at least a very rich family. Those who had grown up in poverty and adversity turned out to be of noble blood, and of course, their parents always wanted them back, always took them in, always loved them just as though they had always had them. It didn't matter the kind of poverty the child had been raised in, didn't matter the lack of social graces, the rough hands, the dearth of education. There was always a happy ending in those kinds of stories.

Sayo couldn't help but remember the speculation that had been passed around the other girls from the Fukuin House when she had first come to work here. For a girl as young as her to be singled out as a suitable servant for the Ushiromiya family, there had to be a reason, there had to be. There had to be a reason that a six-year-old girl who was so little and weak that she couldn't do most of a servant's chores had been singled out like this.

Sayo remembered the whispers: _I'll bet she's one of the family's kids._

_Yeah, I'll bet that's it._ A sharp laugh would follow. _One of the family, Rudolf-sama or Krauss-sama or whoever cheated on their spouse and she's the result. Couldn't even stand to take care of her themselves, so they handed her over to the orphanage._

_No kidding. It would explain why Genji-sama and Kumasawa-san are both so soft on her. Heck, it might even explain why Madam hates her so much. You know, beyond Yasu being a complete hopeless case._

Could that be it?

There was an unwritten rule among the girl servants from the Fukuin House, passed around from the older, more experienced girls to the younger as a warning. If Rudolf-sama was visiting the island, avoid being alone with him at all costs. He would chase after anything in a skirt, and if you got caught alone with him in a secluded part of the mansion, there might be no avoiding it. There was an old rumor that a girl a few years before Sayo was born had to quit because Rudolf-sama had gotten her pregnant and Madam had expelled her for "conduct unbefitting a servant of the Ushiromiya family." Even if you wanted it, there could never be a freely-chosen path, you could never be entirely certain that he would have let you go if you'd said 'no.' Sayo didn't understand half of that, and wasn't sure she wished to.

Could she be an illegitimate daughter of one of the Ushiromiya family? It was a romantic notion, clearly in line with many of the books Sayo had read. A servant of a rich family turned out to be the long-lost daughter of one of its scions; that was a tale fit for a period drama. But, to be honest, she hoped it wasn't true.

In a book, that seemed fine, but in real life, it just seemed too cruel. Sayo had spent all this time as a servant of the Ushiromiya family, washing their clothes and cleaning their house, while she watched Milady Jessica play in the rose garden as a carefree child should and as the adult members of the family (at best) ignored her presence among them. A good servant should be like furniture, Madam always said, reliable but unobtrusive. It seemed too cruel, in circumstances like these, that Sayo should turn out to be a servant to a family that she should have been a part of.

She would take her imagination in different directions, instead.

-0-0-0-

Milady Jessica was a surprisingly good friend.

Not that Sayo thought that Milady Jessica was a bad person, or anything like that. In fact, she thought that Milady Jessica was a very nice person; she was kind of loud and brash sometimes, but she was kindly and loyal and she actually made a very good friend.

Sayo thought, sometimes, that Milady Jessica liked her company better than that of the other girls from the Fukuin House. That really couldn't be true, and even if it was it was probably only because Sayo was closest to Jessica in age, not because of anything about herself, but it did indeed seem that Milady Jessica sought out Sayo's companionship more than that of the other girls. They couldn't see much of each other, since Madam didn't approve of the two of them being friends and Sayo had so much work to do, but when they did, Milady Jessica was always ready to treat Sayo like a _friend_, not a servant.

It was an odd feeling. Odd, but not unpleasant.

It was the time of the family conference again. Usually, around this time of year, Sayo didn't do that many pranks as Beatrice, because all the servants were on edge and so was Madam, and her scolding and punishments grew more and more severe as the time drew closer. Pulling pranks and getting some of the servants in trouble, even if they did disrespect Beatrice-sama's name, that would just be too cruel. Actually, Sayo didn't think she'd ever been on duty during the family conference before. She usually went back to the Fukuin House during the family conference. She got the impression that Madam didn't want her making mistakes in front of the extended family, and Sayo… understood that.

This year, however, was different. Sayo wasn't sure why, but this year she was going to be present during the family conference. She was both terrified and exhilarated. If she messed up, or if Asune or Berune messed up, she would be even more harshly chastised by Madam than usual. At the same time, it was a golden opportunity, allowing Sayo to show how determined she was to do a good job to the whole Ushiromiya family. If she did a good job in front of the whole family, surely Madam would see that she _was_ a good servant, that she was a hard worker and not a shirker or a slacker or anything like that.

Milady Jessica wanted to introduce Sayo to her cousins.

"_Oh, come on, Shannon! Battler and George are really nice, and they'll love you, really! Maria will like you took, even if she is really little. You're so sweet; how could anyone _not _like you?"_

Something else that needed to be noted about Milady Jessica was that she was entirely too inclined to forgive Sayo her faults. But Sayo was forever in her debt for that, so…

The night before the family conference, Sayo went to bed with a smile on her face. Tomorrow was going to be a _good _day.


	3. Failure to Thrive

_Failure to Thrive_

* * *

She had forsaken magic for a while.

This sounds disloyal, doesn't it? What Sayo meant to say was that she had put magic aside for a while. No more hiding, no more withdrawing. But she had a good reason, you see.

The day of the Ushiromiya family conference was inevitable tense and fraught for the adults. They came to discuss their financial woes and beg Master for more money, which he would either refuse or give to them only with extraordinarily strict conditions. Madam always seemed to take her cues from him on how strict to be around others, though Master wasn't nearly as strict with the servants as she was.

Sayo, even young as she was, could see that Master's children didn't seem to like each other very much. Love was something that she knew she should not try to discern; that would be both beneath her and the act of someone who did not know her place. But Sayo was well-accustomed to double-edged barbs, and she could tell that the siblings were using these on each other most of the time. Madam was Eva-sama's favorite target, Eva-sama was Krauss-sama's favorite target, and so on. Asumu-sama and Hideyoshi-sama tried their best to stay out of it, but everyone else among the adults jumped into the fray with gusto.

It was different for the children.

This was the first time Sayo had ever been present at the annual family conference. Madam reserved the right to decide which servants would or would not serve the family at this time, and she had never thought Sayo worthy before now. Someone, Genji-sama or Kumasawa-san, must have intervened on Sayo's behalf, for Sayo herself knew that Madam harbored no higher opinion of her work now than she had last year.

"It's not just an opportunity to show the rest of the family how hard you can work, dear," Kumasawa-san told her, while chopping up mackerel to serve with lunch. "Madam has assigned you to see to the needs of the Master's grandchildren while the conference goes on. It's a wonderful opportunity for you to make new friends."

"B-but Kumasawa-san! Is that really okay?"

She laughed, but not unkindly as Sayo was often laughed at. "Oh, Shannon. You are a servant of the Ushiromiya family, yes, but you will not always be. There will come a day when it will be perfectly acceptable for you to be the friend of children of a rich family, and for now? Being a housemaid doesn't make you inferior to them in any way." Sayo wished she could believe that. "You already know Jessica-sama; you know what a good girl she is. Battler-san and George-san and Maria-chan are all sweet children and will treat you like any of their friends off of the island. You need only let them."

Of course, Sayo had already met Battler-sama and George-sama and Maria-sama. On occasion, their parents would visit Rokkenjima—usually to discuss money again; Master's children didn't actually like each other well enough to visit one another just to make social calls—and when they did that, they usually brought their children along with them.

Sayo had never interacted with Battler-sama or George-sama or Maria-sama in any capacity other than that of a servant. She and Milady might have snuck minutes together to talk about school or new music or nothing much in particular, but Sayo didn't have such an opportunity with the others. Maria-sama was really too young; Battler-sama and George-sama just had this tendency to kind of look through her. It wasn't Sayo's place to approach them, so she didn't, and they didn't approach her.

That didn't mean that Sayo didn't watch them together, of course. Milady Jessica and her cousins always seemed happy together, even when they fought. Their behavior was a far cry from that of their parents; Master's grandchildren seemed more like siblings than the actual siblings did. They played outside and roughhoused with each other (Well, as much roughhousing as such a tiny girl as Maria-sama could, and as much roughhousing Milady Jessica could commit to before being scolded by Madam). They played card games and board games usually stuffed in Milady Jessica's closet, unused, when they came inside. If Madam had let them, they likely would have played hide and seek in the mansion, even George-sama, who was a high school student.

Sayo thought that she would have liked to have had siblings like them.

Jessica had promised to properly introduce Sayo to her cousins this year, and she was as good as her word.

For a while, it was almost like having siblings. (It couldn't last, of course. Battler-sama and Maria-sama and George-sama would all leave the island tomorrow and go back to their lives, while Sayo stayed here, and never left except for school or to return to the Fukuin House—and the latter was occurring quite infrequently now.)

Maria-sama was such a sweet, winning child that Sayo could not help but be fond of her, even if Maria-sama could not actually string a sentence together and Sayo couldn't have a meaningful conversation with her. George-sama was very nice as well, someone Sayo was proud to know. He was quite intelligent, and was so perceptive that he seemed to know everything that was going on in everyone's heads. (To be honest, that might have been just a little frightening to Sayo. George-sama would surely think less of her if he could see just what was going on in _her_ head.)

And then, there was Battler-sama.

Battler-sama was probably the grandchild of Master's whom Sayo had had the least amount of contact with—and that was counting Maria-sama. Rudolf-sama and Asumu-sama's visits to Rokkenjima were the most infrequent of those members of the Ushiromiya family who did not live on the island. Sayo had probably been working at the same time Battler-sama was present on Rokkenjima perhaps twice, in all of the time she had been employed as a servant of the Ushiromiya family. She didn't know him, except to watch him twitch and squirm madly in his chair when he was made to sit still.

Sayo couldn't believe that she hadn't seen Battler-sama for how likeable he was before now. He was just… _Bright_. He spouted off ridiculous English phrases specifically to make Sayo and the other girl servants laugh; he was always trying to put Sayo at her ease. He never treated Sayo like she inferior to him; if he saw how inadequate she was, he never made mention of it, never let on that he had seen. That alone was more than enough to endear him to her.

"Ooh, I've got an idea!"

It had been sheer chance that had allowed Sayo and Battler to discover that they shared a love of mystery novels. Battler had pulled out the book he had brought with him to Rokkenjima, and it happened to be a mystery novel that Sayo had read a few weeks ago. They had fallen into discussing the novel, and mystery in general, crawling on to opposite sides of Battler's bed, Battler leaning back against the pillows and Sayo sitting straight near the foot of the bed. The two of them barely even noticed when Milady Jessica and George-sama withdrew from the room, under the pretense of returning Maria-sama to her mother's care. They certainly didn't notice when the two of them didn't come back.

Battler expressed joking frustration that Sayo had already read the book through when he was only halfway done. Sayo's eyes sparkled as she thought of a plan.

"What kind of idea?" Battler asked, grinning brightly.

Sayo's jaw hurt; that was how much and how widely she had been smiling lately. She couldn't remember ever feeling like this, giddy and giggling and smiling so widely for so long that her jaw hurt. "I—" she pointed to herself with both hands "—am the culprit! I have killed everyone who has died on the ship. Unless you figure out who I am before you finish reading the book, you will have to admit that every last murder was committed using magic."

Battler's reaction was immediate, and sadly quite reflective of the flaws in Sayo's logic. "Huh?"

She felt her face color. Of course she hadn't explained it right; if she had explained it right, Battler would have understood. "Well, umm…" Suddenly, Sayo started to feel small again, started to see her inadequacies for what they were. They hadn't vanished just because she was smiling; they wouldn't do that. "…What I mean is that, well… You know how fantasy is pretty much the opposite of mystery, right?"

He nodded. "Right."

"And what I mean is that mysteries are written so that the reader can solve them. But if a murder was committed by someone who can use magic, like a witch or something like that, you probably wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of how it happened, not by thinking the way a human would. So if you can't figure out on your own how the people on the ship were killed, that's the same as saying that they could have been killed with magic…"

Battler's eyes lit up. "Oh! I get it now, Shannon-chan. That sounds fun!"

Yes, _fun_. Battler thought that the pitiful games Sayo had played against herself to while away the empty evening hours sounded _fun._

Sayo smiled softly. "Thank you very much, Battler-sama."

-0-0-0-

Over the next few months, Sayo began to look for Battler's visits the way a prisoner in an oubliette would have waited for shipments of food and water, and all the while stared up at the small patch of blue sky visible through the bars towards her only salvation.

They had an arrangement. Since Sayo and Battler both loved mystery novels, whenever their paths crossed they would discuss the ones they had read. For the ones they both had read, they would compare notes, seeing how long it took each one of them to figure out the culprit's identity, talk about the book's solvability, and so on. For the ones they were reading right now, they exchanged speculation about who the culprit was, how the murders were accomplished and why the culprit was doing all of this. The 'why' was very important to Battler; he felt as though the structure of the mystery would completely fall apart without it.

The two of them did what they could to make it more likely that they'd see each other. Suddenly, Rudolf-sama and Asumu-sama's trips to Rokkenjima became much more frequent; suddenly, Battler found excuses to slip away from his parents during these trips when he hadn't before. Visits were usually scheduled at least a week in advance. When Sayo learned of these trips, she would beg Asune or Berune or Manon when the former two girls finally left to swap shifts with her, if it so happened that she wasn't scheduled to work during the visit. If that failed, she would outright beg Genji-sama to allow her to work during that time. From then on out, Battler came to find her during her breaks; that was the only time they could really talk.

Competition soon grew into a relationship based on mutual respect for the other's experience with mystery novels. Soon, it started to feel very much to Sayo as though they weren't really sneaking away just to talk about mystery novels. It felt like that was just the excuse they used to be alone together.

Sayo withdrew from magic. She barely needed it right now, you see. She didn't need to pull pranks as Beatrice to stay happy. She didn't need reassurance from all of her friends in the Golden Land that, of course Madam would eventually acknowledge her efforts, no matter how badly Sayo was scolded and then punished for laziness. Those friends began to gather dust in the background, sometimes stepping forwards to speak, but not often. After all, she had real friends now.

One day, she caught sight of her face in a window when she was sweeping the floors. Sayo had been thinking about Battler, wondering about his next visit (The last one before the family conference). In spite of herself (she did _not_ like mirrors, not at all; that had not changed), she looked at her reflection. _I'm… blushing._

Her cheeks were a soft, rosy color; they felt accordingly warm. Sayo blinked at herself, then looked away, both abashed and, somehow, pleased.

Maybe a bit more than a friend.

-0-0-0-

"_Only the heart can kill a person."_

-0-0-0-

Why did time have to fly by so quickly in situations such as this? It never moved quickly enough when Sayo was on her shifts, but when she was talking with Battler, having to duck her head every once in a while so he couldn't see her blushing, time slipped out of her hands like grains of sand from an hourglass.

It was the family conference of 1980, the second Sayo had served at. As had become usual, Sayo and Battler had spent all of their mutual spare time talking to each other, about mystery novels or about nothing in particular. Sometimes, it would turn to silence, Battler scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe and Sayo swishing her skirt in her hands.

She wished she could leave this place.

It was such a foolish wish. Sayo knew she couldn't leave, knew deep in her bones, even at such a young age as ten (though she felt older, and was often complimented to the effect of her looking and acting older than her years), that her fate was bound to this place. Theoretically, she could quit being a servant, but where would that get her? She would just go back to the Fukuin House, that sad place for children without parents. Everyone would look down on her and scorn her when they saw just how pathetic she was, to give up so easily.

But Sayo must have mumbled that out loud, because Battler turned to stare at her intently. "How long do you plan to be a servant, Shannon-chan?"

She blushed and looked away, but the blush was one of shame, rather than secret pleasure. "…I don't know."

"If, someday, you decide to quit…"

"If I do?" He was talking about it like she had a choice.

"Come over to my place." Battler had stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking away from her. He laughed a little, embarrassment coloring his voice. "If you do, we won't need to worry about the time anymore."

"That's right…" Sayo's voice was far-away, her mind already drifting into deep fantasies. "We could be together…" Her lips quirked briefly in a smile. "…For as long as we wanted."

Surely that was just a fantasy, something to draw the mind's eye away from the realities of life. They had fun together on Rokkenjima; that much was true. Sayo liked Battler; she suspected—_hoped_—that he liked her. 'Like' was quickly becoming an inadequate word with which to describe the depths of Sayo's feelings for him, but she didn't see how they could ever see each other outside of Rokkenjima. Battler was a part of the world, and she was stuck here. Stuck in the same milieu, the same endless procession of gray days, stuck working a job where no one acknowledged her efforts nor took notice of the work she was doing at all except to scream at her if she had done it wrong.

But Battler shook his head. He _promised_.

"When that day comes… I'll come for you, riding a white horse."

He _promised_.

So there was a way out of this life, after all? Battler had provided the way out. Sayo, who had read some of the Greek myths, thought he was like Orpheus, trying to lead Eurydice back to the living world from the lands of the dead. That could be just like what was going to happen with them. Battler said he'd be ready to lead her back to the land of the living whenever she was read, whenever she felt like it. He _promised_.

Later, Sayo would wish that she had said "I'm ready!" right then. She would wish that she had jumped into his arms and begged him to take her away from this place right now. But at the moment, all she could do was sit and wonder at the fact that, at last, someone had offered her a way out of this life. There was a life for her, waiting beyond Rokkenjima?

It didn't matter if she didn't decide this year. He had _promised_ that he would come for her. And Sayo would be ready to leave this place behind forever, when he came. Just give it a year.

-0-0-0-

Love, Sayo decided, was the greatest of all emotions. It could not be manufactured, not even by a Witch of Beatrice's prowess. It had to be given by another person, and once it was given, it would stick with you until the end of time. Once you'd had a taste, you were spoiled for everything else.

That was why the world of humans was the one in which Sayo chose to live, for now. Because in the Golden Land, she couldn't be given love by anyone. There was only herself. It took two to create a universe, and love, the most important element of that universe, could never arise there.

So she would wait in the human world, for him to come back.

A year couldn't be that bad.

-0-0-0-

It was two months after the family conference that Sayo heard the news.

Asumu-sama had died suddenly. It was a terrible shock to everyone, as she had still been quite young, and the circumstances of her death were… _unexpected_, to say the least. Even more shocking was the fact that Rudolf-sama had remarried a scant two weeks after his first wife died, to Sumadera Kyrie who, as rumor had it, was visibly pregnant during the ceremony.

Most shocking of all was Battler's departure from the family.

Manon was the one who related the tale to Sayo; Manon was usually unflappable, but she seemed quite shaken as she recounted what she had heard. Battler and Rudolf-sama had had a terrible argument when the latter made his intentions to marry Kyrie-sama known. Battler felt that his mother's memory had been disrespected, that his father had no respect for Asumu-sama, if he could do something like this. As such, Battler had left to live with his maternal grandparents. He had even gone so far as to change his surname to his mother's maiden name, casting off the name of 'Ushiromiya' entirely.

"That idiot doesn't know how good he has it," Manon muttered. "If _I _had a rich family—no, wait, if I had _any _family at all—I'd never leave them."

Sayo couldn't bring herself to scold Manon.

So, would Battler still come to the next family conference?

The consensus amongst the mansion and its inhabitants was that he would not. After all, he had gone so far as to remove his name from the Ushiromiya family register and take on his mother's maiden name instead. Genji-sama counseled the servants to forget about it; it was not, by any stretch of the word, their place to worry about the goings-on of the Ushiromiya family. They were instead to welcome Kyrie-sama and her child to the family as though they had always been there, and would treat them with due respect, as though they had not come into the family under such dubious circumstances.

The image that filled Sayo's mind, during leisure time and work (Madam had taken notice and had threatened to send her back to the Fukuin House in disgrace; everyone knew this to be an idle threat, as Madam would have needed Master's permission to fire a servant, and short of the most serious offenses, Master could never be bothered to fill out the required paperwork) was of Battler's back as he had left with his still-whole family this past family conference.

Would she ever see him again?

Sayo didn't know what to do. If she could have just asked him herself, that would have laid it all to rest. But she didn't know Battler's address, didn't know his phone number. Besides, whether or not he answered to that name, Battler was still a son of the Ushiromiya family; it would be the height of presumption for Sayo to contact him in such a way, as though they were equals.

_Battler-san… You said that you would never come back to this place. But that's a lie, right? I mean, you did promise you'd come back. That meant something to you, didn't it?_

_Of course it did_.

She was crying, but she sat up in bed and dried her eyes. It was easy enough to put the setting of the Golden Land in front of her and to take the forgotten dolls out of the closet and dust them off. Beatrice and her demoness friend gave her the words of reassurance she had so badly wished for.

Everything was just being blown out of proportion. Of course Battler would be angry that his father had remarried so soon after his mother's death; it was only natural that he would want to retreat to his grandparents' house to stew and collect his thoughts. But eventually, Battler and Rudolf-sama would reconcile; that could very well occur within the year. No matter how they quarreled, father and son surely loved each other and would want to repair their relationship. No one could say with certainty that Battler would never return to Rokkenjima, and Sayo was foolish to think in that way.

Beatrice, eavesdropper that she was, pointed out that Battler and Rudolf-sama were always in the midst of some argument or another. That just added fuel to the fire of the idea that of course Battler would come back eventually. This argument could not be too different from all the others.

There was nothing Sayo could do to hasten Battler and Rudolf-sama's reconciliation. She did not need to worry about it.

Of course Battler would come back.

-0-0-0-

Sayo worked through the year with those words engraved upon her heart '_Of course Battler-san will come back. There's no way he wouldn't.'_

In the meantime, she began to map out what she would do when she quit her job as a servant and left the island. Sayo hadn't really given it a whole lot of thought before, but in this, she really was planning to start a new life with Battler, wasn't she? So Sayo needed to do some more planning. It all came down to her resolve. If she hadn't made any plans, hadn't taken any steps, her resolve would be as fragile as a delicate glass figurine set on a window ledge during an earthquake.

Money wasn't a problem. Sayo _had_ been earning full wages in all the years she had worked here, after all, and unlike the other servants, she hadn't had anything she needed to spend it on, still being a dependent of the Fukuin House and having all of her needs met by that place. Once she was old enough, she could figure out where Battler lived, and rent an apartment near his house.

Of course, she would have to work to support herself while she attended high school; Sayo had no illusions about that. But she'd been working most of her life, so it wouldn't be much of a change of pace. Maybe her new employers would be nicer to her…

If Sayo wasn't a servant anymore, there wouldn't be any real difference between her and Battler. She could call him whenever she wanted, visit him in his home whenever she wanted. Whatever relationship they had would be allowed to blossom. Sayo didn't know if it would lead to marriage or anything like that. She hoped it would, but she wasn't sure. She was really too young to be thinking about this sort of stuff anyways. But when she did think of it, Sayo supposed that Battler might have thrown away the name 'Ushiromiya' specifically _because_ he wanted a future with her; it would have caused problems, for him to marry one of his family's servants. She could believe that. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to believe that, even if the idea was kind of silly.

They would make their own universe. Sayo was certain of that, at least. If she only had faith, he would come.

-0-0-0-

_Ushiromiya family conference, 1981_

Everyone welcomed Kyrie-sama as though she had always been here. It was a little disconcerting, to say the least, at how easily Asumu-sama was forgotten, even more disconcerting to see that Kyrie-sama was all but actively encouraging everyone to forget that Asumu-sama had ever existed. Madam was quite stiff around Kyrie-sama (she had been absolutely furious with Rudolf-sama for his indiscretions), but everyone else did indeed act as though Kyrie-sama had always been Rudolf-sama's wife. Little Ange-sama, less than a year old, was treated as though she had not been the product of adultery, which Sayo supposed was only fair; whatever the parents might have done, the child was innocent.

Battler had not come back.

George-sama was of the opinion that Battler had simply gone out into the world as all adult men eventually had to. In his eyes, it was natural that Battler had simply left the nest several years earlier than most young men did. To George-sama, this was natural, it was to be expected, and it was only natural that Battler would never come back. That worried Sayo, more than a little bit. George-sama had always been very insightful; he always seemed to know all the answers. And he was quite adamant, making very certain he got his point across to Sayo, that he suspected that Battler wouldn't come back at all. If George-sama thought that this was a permanent arrangement, might it be?

Battler had not come back.

He hadn't come back for her.

Once again, Sayo found herself leaning on the shoulders of those she had thought she would put away, not needing them anymore. She needed their insight, their comfort. After all… Sayo had not shared her feelings with anyone. So the only person she could seek comfort from was herself. Sayo could put up a smile to the world, face the world as though she didn't feel hurt, but she needed their comfort.

She didn't need to mope. Beatrice had said it herself, hadn't she? This was a trial, a test of Sayo's devotion. Despair would get Sayo nowhere.

God had often tested his faithful. He had allowed the Devil to test Job, with every torment imaginable permitted except that which would end in Job's death. Job had faltered at times, lifted his eyes to the heavens and screamed, but in the end, he had held fast. His faith was rewarded, in the end. So would Sayo's.

She would wait. Love was patience. Love had hope, had faith. What was faith except to believe in someone you couldn't be sure existed, and to believe that something would happen when you couldn't be sure? Love could wait. So could Sayo. (Even if it stung like the thorns from a rosebush, dipped in acid.)


	4. Cracks in the Glass

_Cracks in the Glass_

* * *

"Genji-sama?"

It had been a long day. Some business associates of Krauss-sama's came to the island to meet with him, and Madam had all the servants attending to their needs, on top of their normal duties. Sayo had managed to get through the day without spilling anything or committing any unintentional acts of rudeness. Unfortunately, all had not gone well. Sayo had been sent out to serve tea to Krauss-sama and his associates—originally, it was supposed to be Manon serving tea, but the cook was sick and Manon had to help Kumasawa-san prepare dinner—and when asked what sort of tea she was serving, Sayo couldn't say. No one had told her what sort of tea it was, and she had been behind schedule; she'd barely been able to stop in the kitchen for more than a few seconds to wheel the cart out towards the parlor.

As was to be expected, Madam was not pleased with Sayo's ignorance. Her scolding stung. It was all Sayo could do not to protest that she wasn't the one who was supposed to bring the tea out in the first place, _Manon_ was. Manon had probably known because she was expected to know, but Sayo wasn't supposed to be the one serving tea today, so how could she have known?

The words were bitten down, but with such difficulty that Sayo was sure that Shannon would have been ashamed of her. Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, too, but at least they would never have to know.

All in all, Sayo was relieved when the day drew to a close. Hopefully, tomorrow would be better; that was the only way she could ever avoid a scolding. After Genji-sama reviewed the shifts for the rest of the week with the other servants, Sayo approached him, smiling what she hoped was nothing more than an innocent, disaffected smile. "Genji-sama, may I speak with you?"

Still sitting at his desk, Genji-sama looked up from the timetables. "What is it, Shannon?" he asked, his tone just as detached as ever (Sayo wished she could sound so detached, sometimes).

"The family conference is in a month, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is. I assume you wish to work during that time?"

"…That… That would be very nice, Genji-sama."

He nodded. "I will discuss it with Madam and the Master, then. I see no reason for why they should refuse you."

Sayo beamed. "Thank you very much, Genji-sama!" She hesitated, staring down at her feet, before asking, "…Genji-sama… Do you think Battler-sama will return this year?"

At that, Genji-sama stared at her, his eyes narrowed—still, his face managed to reveal nothing. "It is not my place to say," he said finally. "Whether or not Battler-sama returns to the Ushiromiya family depends on him and on Rudolf-sama. Do not trouble yourself with it, Shannon. He is not for you."

A sick, shamed heat crawled up her neck. _Am I really so transparent? _Sayo hung her head. "Yes, Genji-sama."

It was the second time that day that Sayo had bitten down on protests before they could escape her mouth. It was the first time that day that she had lied.

-0-0-0-

She wasn't prepared to leave last year. That was the sad truth. Sayo hadn't cleared her resignation with Madam; she hadn't even filled out all the paperwork needed in order for her to resign at all. Indeed, Sayo had put everything off until the last minute, unwilling to do anything that might jeopardize her life here, gray and repetitive as it was, until she was sure that Battler would come for her.

Surely her lack of faith was the reason he hadn't come.

The root of love is faith. Sayo held that truth as self-evident in her own heart. One could not love God without having faith that He existed. Having faith was believing in someone when she had no solid proof of their existence or trustworthiness. Having faith that something would happen meant believing that it would happen even if she had no proof.

In order for love to exist, faith had to enter first. Sayo needed to have faith in Battler and believe that he would fulfill his promise to her, but she also needed to be the sort of person he could have faith in, too.

"_God is testing you," _Beatrice advised. _"But God is not heartless. If you show faith, He will reward you."_

This was a test, wasn't it? If it was not God's test for his child, it could still well be the world's test for Yasuda Sayo. If Sayo lost faith, she would fail, and be left alone with her misery and shame. But if she kept faith, Battler would surely come for her, no matter the obstacles, no matter how many people said it was inappropriate for them to be in love, beneath him and too high for her. Genji-sama said that Battler "wasn't for her", but the differences in rank wouldn't matter at all once Sayo was no longer a servant of the Ushiromiya family. This was the modern world; differing social classes was no longer an insurmountable impediment to marriage. Once Sayo was no longer a servant, there would be no difference between them.

_I really need to think about this. I have to think about it, dream about it as much as I can. The image of it must be as clear to me as the world around me._

The daydreams Sayo conjured in her lonely little room had begun to take on a different shape. They were not of the glamorous past of her mystery novels, nor the static present of the Golden Land. They weren't of the Golden Witch or her demoness friends dressed all in red. Sayo's daydreams were of the soft future, filled with humans. There were no witches or demons or spirits in the future. There was no need for them.

Sayo wanted to marry Battler. She was no longer afraid to say it, no longer feared being seen as presumptuous or greedy. She wanted to become Battler's bride. As an orphan of the Fukuin House, a child with no parents and (originally) no money, Sayo had never been encouraged to dream of a lavish wedding. The children of that most Christian house were never encouraged to dream lavish dreams. But when Sayo left Rokkenjima forever, it so happened that she would no longer be a child of the Fukuin House. She would be allowed to dream.

Sayo had on occasion flipped through magazines the older girls brought with them to read while on break. Benon had been especially fond of wedding magazines. She was also the only one of the girls on Rokkenjima when Sayo started working there who would let the little girl touch her magazines. _"Well… Okay… But only because you're always so careful with your books. You'd better be careful with this too, Yasu."_

There had been a young woman in one of those magazines who had captivated Sayo the first time she laid eyes on her. This woman was slender, with pale, silky skin, long dark hair that gleamed in the camera light, and large brown eyes. She wore the most beautiful gown Sayo had ever seen. It was, of course, pure white, as was befitting a bride, strapless and mostly backless, though the bust was modestly covered. The dress had a v-shaped waistline, only to flare out in a soft, frothy skirt, gilt with silver; the skirt trailed on the ground nearly a foot behind her. There was a caption of the young woman lifting her skirt high enough to reveal her shoes—white satin shoes with low heels and a bow on the front of each shoe, pinned down with a diamond. The young bride's white gloves went up nearly to her shoulders, and her sheer white veil, trailing nearly as far as her skirt, was also gilt with silver. She was radiant.

Sayo bit her lip. She wasn't nearly as pretty as that woman. That woman was beautiful; she would have looked stunning even covered in dirt and wearing nothing but sackcloth. Sayo wasn't nearly as blessed as her. She looked passable when clean and wearing clean, flattering clothes. Milady Jessica snuck her a curling iron for her birthday this year; Sayo thought she looked passable with her long brown hair curled, too. But 'passable' was about as good as it got for her.

Manon thought that there was something 'foreign' about Sayo's appearance. _"You look a little like those European actresses in the movies. I don't know, it's something about your eyes and your face." _Manon wasn't the only one who thought so. Sayo had on more than one occasion heard couples looking to adopt from the Fukuin House commenting on the foreignness of her features. After hearing it so many times, Sayo knew it wasn't a coincidence that all of the couples had decided not to adopt her soon afterwards.

There had been a few children like that at the Fukuin House. Sanon, for one, was rumored to have been abandoned for her albinism, though heaven help anyone who said so in her presence. Children like that were rarely considered attractive. Milady Jessica broke the mold, despite being even more foreign-looking than Sayo (and Sayo was grateful, at least, that her hair had finally turned brown, a more natural shade for the Japanese), by being friendly, outgoing and fairly charismatic among her schoolmates.

Sayo herself had none of this going for her. She wasn't outgoing or charismatic. She wasn't even considered particularly friendly; one of her acquaintance-friends at school described her as 'distant.' Her hair was lank when left uncurled; her skin was pasty; her eyes were an uninteresting shade of blue-gray. Her voice was deeper than was considered attractive in a girl, and had the added disadvantage of being scratchy as well. Sayo had shot up in height over the last few months, and was now taller than most of the girls in her year group, but otherwise, she still had the body of a child. Her arms and legs were still skinny and gangly, she had no hips or breasts to speak of, and she hadn't even had her first period yet.

She wasn't pretty. She was, at best, 'passable.' The most gorgeous wedding dress in the world wasn't going to make her look pretty. But…

But Sayo shook her head. It didn't _matter_ if she was beautiful, or even pretty. Battler hadn't made that promise to her because she was pretty; he made it to her because he _loved_ her, and wanted to spend his life with her. Love was blind. Everyone said that love was blind. Sayo could wear as lovely a wedding dress as she wished, and love would lend her radiance.

After their wedding, they would have to live in a small apartment at first, as most young couples did. Sayo knew that, as Battler's wife, she would be expected to tend to the home and not work outside of it. She was sure that Battler would work very hard, and her own money would go towards saving up for a larger apartment or maybe even a house. In the meantime, she would light their home and make new friends in a new city.

Once a few years had gone by and they were more financially secure, they would have children. Sayo had never felt any special longing for children, but at the same time, she had never been able to imagine married life without seeing children there too. Having a child was the ultimate symbol of a marriage. What was marriage without a child? It was just a pair of signatures on a marriage license; it was too fragile to hold up forever.*

On how many children they would have, and what their children would be like, Sayo didn't dare speculate. Children were God's blessing to the world. It was not her place to speculate, not even in her wildest dreams. But Sayo imagined the sense of warmth and fulfillment that came with being a mother, and it didn't matter that she specifically kept herself from imagining what her children would look like. She could hear their voices clearly enough.

What would it feel like to wake up every morning and see Battler lying beside her in bed?

Sayo smiled up at the ceiling, and if her hands were shaking, just a little bit, she pretended she didn't notice.

Surely, he would come back for her.

-0-0-0-

Sayo read three new (well, new to her) mystery novels in the month leading up to the annual family conference. Consider it a… A promise of her own.

-0-0-0-

(She filled out the paperwork this year, but when she got to the part where she had to sign her name, Sayo hesitated, bit the nib of her pen, and ultimately put the paperwork away. Later, she would wonder if things would have gone differently, had she worked up her courage.)

-0-0-0-

_Ushiromiya family conference, 1982_

"Oh, Shannon! I didn't see you there."

Sayo opened her eyes and straightened her back automatically. When she saw George-sama standing just a few feet away from her in the hall, her face flushed with embarrassment and she sketched a deep bow. "George-sama, my apologies. I… I was unaware…" She straightened again and forced a cheery smile to her face. "Was there something you needed?"

George-sama shook his head and smiled gently. "No, there wasn't anything. I was just going to get something of Mother's." He narrowed his eyes. "Are _you _alright, Shannon?" he asked seriously. "The way you were standing…"

He probably meant 'the way you were leaning up against the wall, arms folded so tight against your chest you might as well have been in a straitjacket, with your eyes screwed shut all the while.' That was probably what he meant.

"Oh, it's nothing, George-sama. I… I'm just a little tired, that's all."

"Yes, the conference can be overwhelming." So that's what he thought it was. "And without Battler-kun around to lighten the mood, well…"

Sayo's hand clenched on the end of her skirt.

"I'm sorry for my mother." She stared at him, surprised, and George-sama rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. To be honest, it was probably the most relaxed gesture she had ever seen out of him. George-sama had always been very kind to her, but he seemed a bit… formal. Even considering the differences between them. "She wasn't kind to you."

"It was my own fault, George-sama." Whether or not it was, that was the response she was expected to give. "I should have been more careful with the tea."

He frowned a little, but didn't contradict her. "I have to head back now. It was nice talking with you, Shannon."

"Thank you very much." The words felt bitter.

-0-0-0-

Sayo missed the days when Milady Jessica only asked _her _to come to her room and talk. She was being uncharitable, and what good did it do to complain about a situation that she couldn't change? She could only endure it. But still, she missed the days when Milady Jessica seemed content with Sayo's company alone. Sayo doubted she would ever be comfortable sharing Milady's attention with Manon.

Manon was a bit nicer than the other girls who had come from the Fukuin House. Sayo would admit that. The fact that Manon was a little younger than the norm for girl servants probably had something to do with that. She wasn't so far apart in age from Sayo, and couldn't really look down on her as a much-younger, inexperienced girl as Runon and Renon and Sanon and Benon had. Neither had she been fed on rumors of Sayo's hopelessness the way Asune and Berune had been. Manon didn't look down on Sayo. She didn't laugh at her whenever she tried to tell her to do something. She didn't call her 'Yasu', either to her face or behind her back. Sayo had finally proven herself as a respectable role model to the new girls from the Fukuin House, and yet…

And yet she couldn't persuade herself to be trusting of Manon's smiles. She seemed harmless enough, but Sayo knew that her words had a sharp edge to them sometimes. Sayo found herself waiting, just waiting, for Manon to turn that sharp edge on her.

Milady Jessica liked her, though. Liked her enough that she had begun inviting both Sayo and Manon to her room at the same time, whenever they had breaks or when Madam was away; it was the latter circumstance, in this case. Milady and Manon were rather alike, after all—friendly, outgoing and, when away from the company of adults, rather loud—even if Milady wasn't nearly as sharp-tongued as Manon could be sometimes.

The real problem today, though, was the topic of conversation.

Manon laughed brightly in response to Milady Jessica's vexed face, her eyes crinkling upwards. "Totally! Why do guys turn into total morons when they get together?!"

Milady Jessica shook her face, hiding her head in her hands to hide how red her cheeks had gotten—Sayo could still see the red through the cracks between her fingers, though. "It was one hell of a reality check," Milady groaned. "I thought this guy was a bit cool, you know, mature. And _then_ I see him with some of the guys in our class, talking about all this dirty stuff, and he's just got this _creepy_ laugh! Did I tell you how creepy his laugh is?!"

"I think you might have mentioned it, once or twice," Manon remarked dryly.

"Well it's really creepy! It's like your worst nightmares gave birth to a voice box and stuck it in this kid's throat! It's the kind of laugh you hear from a serial killer right before he cuts off your head!"

Manon gaped at her for a moment, visibly shocked, before laughing again, perhaps a little shaken this time. "That does sound like a creepy laugh. You should probably stay away from him, Milady."

Sayo forced a giggle and exclaimed, "It's true that boys always act like little kids when they're together." It didn't take someone adept at reading people to see that the conversation needed to be steered away from talk of serial killers.

She knew what was expected of her. All she had to do was occasionally punctuate the conversation with some helpful remark, and no one would notice anything amiss. Milady never really tried to get meaningful conversation out of her when Manon was around. It was clear she liked Manon's company better, and honestly, who wouldn't? If you could overlook the girl's sharp tongue, she was clearly better company than Sayo. She knew how to hold on to a conversation, instead of just propping it up. She was more than a 'good listener.' She was a 'good conversationalist', too.

In the moments when nothing was required of her, Sayo mostly thought of all the things she was not.

"Well, it's not like girls are any better." Manon leaned back on the cushioned chair Milady had provided for her, flicking a non-existent bit of dust off her skirt.

The chat went on like this for a while. Since Krauss-sama and Madam were away for the evening, it was just Milady and Master, out of all the Ushiromiya family, in the house. This essentially meant that Milady had the run of the house, as Master rarely emerged from his study these days. None of the servants would report back to Madam that Milady had been chatting up the girl servants her own age; no one saw the point in it, and no one would be that cruel to Milady or the servants she was friendly with. But Sayo almost wished that Madam was home, since it would have at least cut the conversation short. She didn't want to talk about boys…

Suddenly, Milady's nervous laughter filled the room. "Oh, come on, Shannon! I don't want to have to be the only one talking about this."

Sayo felt her mouth fall open. Her mouth was working, but no words would come out. A hot, hard lump lodged in her throat. Finally, she managed, "I… Well… I don't really… have anyone like that around here."

No, not around. Maybe not at all.

More of Milady Jessica's laughter rose up. "Don't betray me, okay, Shannon? We've gotta get boyfriends together! We promised, didn't we?!"

Sayo remembered promising no such thing.

Manon giggled. Maybe it was Shannon's imagination, but there was something a touch malicious in her giggling. "Well, believe it or not, it's not uncommon at all for girls like Shannon to get a head start and leave all their friends behind."

'Leave all their friends behind?'

Milady Jessica's face darkened. "What?! Shannon! You aren't going out with anyone, are you?!"

Sayo shook her head, wilting under Milady's stare. She wanted to leave the room so badly… "N-no… I'm not."

"Really?" Milady frowned at her.

"Really."

Manon laughed. "You're lying, aren't you, Shannon-chan!" She leaned back in her chair and clapped her hands. "You've got a boyfriend already, don't you?" She smiled slyly. "I can always tell. It's always the quiet ones."

_Die… Either die or leave the room; you're no better than the others, are you?_

At this, Milady launched forward and shook Sayo's shoulders. "How could you?" she cried in mock outrage; Sayo only barely managed to catch the undertone of laughter beneath her shouting. "Confess, confess!" she shouted, shaking Sayo's shoulders all the time.

_Are you thinking of me at all, Battler-san? I trust you _(want to trust you) _but I'm weak. I still need a sign. I'll quit my job; I'll come away with you. All it will take is a word. Please, I'm as determined as I ever will be. There's no reason for you to doubt my faith in you. I will never forget the promise you made to me. Please come for me._

Manon shook her head sharply. "Never trust a promise you make with a guy," she said sourly. "Even if it's all written down, they'll try and find some way out of it. You can't count on them." Was that the voice of experience talking?

Sayo stared at her, astonished and not a little terrified, but Manon didn't seem to know what was in her heart.

Milady shrugged, letting go of Sayo and leaning back on her bed. "Well, I think guys and girls just have different ideas of what's important."

"No, I don't think that's it," Manon demurred. "Girls are dreamers. Guys just do stuff without thinking."

"I guess it's impossible for men and women to ever really understand each other."

Manon snorted. "It's pretty hard, at least. What I've noticed is that girls often think they know exactly what a guy's thinking when they _really don't_. They'll look for hidden meanings in words guys said without meaning anything by it at all. They just get the wrong idea."

"Yeah, I've known girls like that. I could have told them that it was all nonsense, but they insisted on taking every word of it seriously."

"It's a bit sad when a girl gets the wrong idea for no reason."

Milady and Manon tipped their heads back and laughed together. Sayo sank low in her chair, staring down at the ground. They were laughing at her. Maybe they didn't know it, but they were laughing at her. Weren't they?

_You promised, didn't you, Battler-san? You promised that you would come for me, riding on a white horse, like a prince out of a fairytale. All of this must be another one of God's trials. God is testing my faith, the way he allowed the Devil to test Job. That has to be it. I won't listen. I won't care about it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all._

But somehow, she didn't quite manage not to hear Milady say, "I don't ever want to be a girl like that, thinking her heart is linked to a guy's for no reason."

It was getting so hard to breathe.

-0-0-0-

At another interval:

"Never trust a man," Manon said, oddly gloomily. "He'll break your heart, every time."

-0-0-0-

It had been a week since the annual Ushiromiya family conference. Everything was changing, in the two years since Battler had last come to Rokkenjima. Everyone had gotten used to Kyrie-sama and Ange-sama. Sometimes, it was as though Battler and Asumu-sama had never existed. (Sometimes, looking at the odd gleam in Kyrie-sama's eye if someone brought up Asumu-sama accidentally, Sayo wondered if Kyrie-sama didn't _want _everyone to forget about Battler and Asumu-sama. But that was a cruel thought, unworthy of her, so she tried—_tried_—to shelve it.)

No one really talked about Battler where the rest of the family could hear. George-sama had expressed some sentiment of missing him to Sayo, but in the presence of the family, he gave no sign of even remembering him at all. No one did. No one spoke of him, not even Rudolf-sama or Madam, who had been very concerned about him the first family conference after he left the family. It was doubtful whether Maria-sama, young as she was, even remembered Battler at all.

Battler was only spoken of when Sayo broached the subject. George-sama in particular stared very seriously at Sayo and spoke of how Battler was like a bird leaving the nest. It was all very similar to what he had said last year, but with even more conviction. George-sama seemed convinced that he wasn't coming back, and he swayed Milady Jessica to his side. Neither of them believed that Battler was coming back.

"_Well, we know Battler-kun. I'm sure he's adapted to his new life and is enjoying himself. There's no reason to worry."_

"_This is Battler we're talking about, so you can bet he's forgotten all about us and is having a great time."_

What?

That… That was a lie, wasn't it?

"_Yeah, I'll bet he is. And I think that's best for everyone. Thinking for himself, his family, his late mother, Battler-kun decided to find a new life. So I hope he lives that life to the fullest. If he completely forgets about the Ushiromiya family, that's just perfect."_

This… This was a test, wasn't it? Another one of God's tests? God had let the Devil send his demons to torment and tempt her. That had to be it. _The root of love is faith. I will not doubt. I will not lose hope. I will not believe that he has forgotten me._

The worst of it was when George-sama, after saying all of this with such confidence, stared directly at Sayo, clearly expecting her to smile in response and agree with every word he was saying. Shannon could do that. Sayo just sat in the background, and let her. George-sama didn't seem to notice the difference, anyways.

_The root of love is faith._

_The root of love is faith._

_The root of love is faith._

_I never asked him to say anything to me. He said it all himself. Without me saying anything, he promised that he would come back for me. He promised that he would take me away from this life. I never forced him to say it. He promised that himself. The root of love is faith._

She kept having the same dream, night after night.

In this dream, Sayo finally left Rokkenjima to go searching for Battler. It had been so long, and she couldn't bear to wait any longer. When she found him, he wasn't the Battler she had known. He wasn't the same person in his heart as the one who had promised that he would come back for her and take her away from her gray life on Rokkenjima. He had forgotten everything. At first, he didn't even recognize her when she approached him. And then…

And then, he laughed. He laughed at her when she reminded him of the promise he had made to her two years ago.

"_Are you kidding? You really expected me to do that?! 'Come back on a white horse'? Come on; you really took that seriously? Couldn't you tell I was just joking? I never meant to do any of that!"_

"_Never trust a man," _Manon had said. _"He'll break your heart, every time."_

Was that supposed to be the truth? Was she just one of those girls Manon and Milady had laughed about, the ones who took everything a guy said to them too seriously, and got the wrong idea? The one who thought love existed where, in fact, there was none?

Whenever she awoke from this nightmare, whenever she jolted awake and sat up in bed, Sayo's eyes were inexorably drawn to her reflection in the mirror. Her face was tear-stained and red, her eyes puffy and bloodshot. There was her pathetic, miserable face, staring back at her. How she hated mirrors. They only ever told her the truth. This one, holding as it did the image of her tear-soaked face, could only ask her what promise there had been to start with. Did they really make such a promise? Did Battler _really _promise to save her from this empty life? Or had she just read too much into something else he said? Had he said something jokingly, never meant to be a real promise, and had she taken it as something more binding?

Maybe she had just imagined it all.

_The root of love is faith. No matter how many demons come up from Hell to mock me and laugh at my tears, I must not lose faith. How can Battler-san have faith in me if I don't have any faith in him? Trust is not a one-way thing. Both halves of a relationship must be able to trust each other._

_He'll remember me. He will. George-sama must be wrong; Milady and Manon, too. Battler-san hasn't forgotten his promise, and he hasn't forgotten me. God and Battler-san both are testing me. God will not reward me unless I show my faithfulness. And Battler-san wouldn't want a faithless bride, would he? He will come for me. Next year, he'll come…_

That didn't change the fact that she was alone.

Sayo conjured up the intangible second bed that had once been here, for Shannon to sleep on. It was such a comfort, not having to stay alone in this dark, quiet room, being able to believe that when the boards creaked, it was the sound of someone else walking around in the room and not just the lonely sounds of an empty room. It was such a comfort, being able to believe that, if she broke down crying again, there would be someone there to hug her and tell her that everything would be alright.

Beatrice's demon-like friend stopped by occasionally, dropping out of black holes in the ceiling or rising up from holes in the floor. She brought a vase full of flowers from the Golden Land. There were golden roses, and lining the rim of the vase, little forget-me-nots. Everyone always overlooked the forget-me-nots, the pale dashes of blue in an otherwise golden rose garden. But they were always there, peeking out between the roses, waiting to be noticed.

Beatrice herself came, and sat in the chair by Sayo's bed. "I will watch as you sleep, and weave magic to protect you from your nightmares," she said with a grim look on her face. "After all the encouragement I gave you, it's the least I can do."

But when Sayo closed her eyes again, she knew that there was only one person in the room.

* * *

* Let me just make one thing clear. I have nothing against people who get married and decide not to have kids. I myself wouldn't have kids if my life depended on it. But considering the kind of environment Sayo was raised in, you can't really blame her for thinking this way.


	5. Testing the Water

What I've gathered from seeing 'Confession of the Golden Witch' scans going around on Tumblr is that Kinzo figured out that Sayo was his kid when she accidentally spilled hot soup on her feet and he saw amputation scars when she took her shoes and socks off—he knew that the scars were probably from an operation to remove a sixth toe on each foot, and since Lion presumably had six toes on each foot like him, Kinzo figured that this probably wasn't a coincidence. As far as "ways Kinzo could figure out that Sayo was his kid" go, I like this one. It's something that clearly connects Sayo to Kinzo, something that can't be written off easily. Afterwards, he began showing her greater favor; it's canon, per EP6, that Kinzo taught Shannon/Kanon how to handle guns and target practice, and 'Confession' seems to show this as well. So I thought I would stick my version of the scene in here; I've only seen one panel, and I don't really know the outside context for the scene (such as why Sayo would be serving Kinzo when usually only a very select few are allowed to do so), so I've made some assumptions.

* * *

_Testing the Water_

* * *

Sayo was rarely given an opportunity to impress others with her skill as a servant that was not fraught in some way.

The family conferences were not all they were cracked up to be, especially when Sayo was called away from the cousins' sides to tend to the adults. Eva-sama had latched onto her as someone she could humiliate in front of the family in order to shame Madam. She would ask after the blend and flavor of the tea, likely knowing that only Kawano-san the cook was allowed to taste the tea (and that it would not be polite for Sayo to point that out) and that Sayo probably didn't know the blend. It was the same with the food; only Kawano-san was allowed to taste it, and Eva-sama must have known that, but she would still ask Sayo for an 'honest opinion' on how it tasted. If she put a spoon or a fork or a knife in the wrong place on the table setting, Eva-sama would surely point it out. If even a droplet of tea hit the tablecloth of the floor, Eva-sama would snigger and remark upon it. If Sayo stumbled, she would laugh at her. It was quite clear why Eva-sama had latched onto Sayo in particular: she had decided that it was easiest to prey upon the weakest of the servants instead of mocking Kumasawa-san, whom everyone liked, or attempting to pierce Genji-sama's stalwart exterior.

Family conferences were also a very sad time for Sayo, these days. They reminded her of Battler and the promise he had made to her, what was feeling increasingly like an eternity ago. They reminded her of all her uncertainty, all her fear and doubt.

Serving business associates of Krauss-sama's or the family members when they came in smaller groups throughout the year wasn't any better. Eva-sama took any opportunity that she could to shame Madam, using Sayo as a vehicle for that; it didn't matter that George-sama often tried to deflect attention away from Sayo and her mistakes (It was probably because she didn't deserve his defense that everyone noticed her anyways). During these times, Madam was always breathing down Sayo's neck, waiting for her to make a mistake so that she could scold her. Sayo inevitably became nervous, and as a result of that, she unavoidably made some mistake that, whether large or small, caused Madam to scold her harshly and penalize her in some way, usually by refusing to let her eat for the rest of the day or by being forced to work longer than any of the other servants.

In these moments, when she lied down to sleep with her stomach growling, when she was still cleaning, alone, well after dark, the night shift told not to help her, she felt bitter. Madam had never been anyone's servant! Madam had no idea how difficult it was! Those thoughts were demonic, in a way. She tried to press them down into nothingness, but the more times this happened to Sayo, the less she was able to ignore them.

Now, she had another opportunity to prove herself, and Sayo didn't know if this was the lease or the most fraught of them all. She only had to impress one man, or at the very least not make a fool out of herself in front of him. But what a man he was.

Genji-sama had taken ill. Doctor Nanjo said it had something to do with the change of the seasons from fall into winter; he also seemed to attribute it to male servants not being issued warmer winter uniforms the way female servants were. Either way, Genji-sama was too ill to work. That, Sayo considered rather worrying. She had seen Genji-sama work through colds and through headaches with nary a complaint—his example was to be aspired to. How ill must he be if even he admitted that he needed to rest? Sayo had visited him in his room in the servant quarters this morning, and what she saw did little to reassure her.

"…_Genji-sama? I've brought you breakfast."_

_Genji-sama was, as far as Sayo knew, the only servant of the Ushiromiya family who lived on Rokkenjima full-time. Perhaps that was why he alone was permitted to wear the family crest, the One-Winged Eagle, on his clothes, when even Madam was not (A fact that Eva-sama never let her forget). Supposedly, Genji-sama was a childhood friend of Master's, but Sayo doubted that that would be enough for him to be granted such an honor. However, Sayo was quite sure that Genji-sama's seniority and the fact that he lived on Rokkenjima was why he slept in a room that was nearly as large and as comfortable as the rooms the family slept in. Sometimes, Sayo wished she could have a bed as large and as comfortable-looking as Genji-sama's._

_The man in question was sitting up in bed, looking rather pale and drawn, his eyes bloodshot, but otherwise not very different from how he normally looked. "Thank you, Shannon." His voice was more than a little hoarse. "Just leave it on my desk."_

_Sayo nodded. Genji-sama's breakfast was a simple one: a glass of milk, a bagel with plain cream cheese on it, and some sort of apple pastry with a foreign name that Sayo couldn't pronounce. Kumasawa-san had surprised her, telling her that Genji-sama liked sweet foods and was actually a talented pastry chef himself. It wasn't something Sayo would have expected of him._

"_H-How are you feeling, Genji-sama?" Sayo asked from the doorway, staring anxiously at him. On second glance, he really did look ill. One could look pale and drawn without being sick, but there was something… _frail_ about him. The thick, phlegmy cough that then shook Genji-sama's shoulders did nothing to alleviate her anxiety._

"_I will recover. Just do your best today, Shannon."_

_Sayo smiled. "Yes, Genji-sama."_

Genji-sama being ill was actually a huge problem for the servants, even if it was only him who was sick. The problem was that Genji-sama was the only one Master would allow to serve him. In fact, Genji-sama was the only person on Rokkenjima Master consistently allowed to enter his study. Sayo has once heard a couple of the adult servants, two who had since retired, talking about how when Master's late wife, Shizuka-sama, was still alive, she would stand outside the study fuming, listening to Master and Genji-sama talk while never being allowed to enter herself.

In his present state, Genji-sama could not serve Master in any capacity. At the same time, Master would be deeply angered if his lunch wasn't served to him on time—it was a mercy that Master rarely took breakfast, either with his family or at all. A solution had to be found.

Sayo wasn't sure how, but Doctor Nanjo persuaded Master to allow Kumasawa-san and Sayo to serve him lunch in his study. This was a huge opportunity for Sayo, who had never served Master directly or privately before. But as she pushed the trolley down the hall towards Master's study, she felt as though there were butterflies dancing wildly in her stomach. Master was so short-tempered; what if she didn't bow properly, or spilled something, or couldn't answer a question about the food?

Kumasawa-san seemed to sense Sayo's sudden attack of nerves. She patted Sayo's shoulder and smiled encouragingly at her. "Don't worry, dear. You'll be fine. Master isn't nearly as strict with us servants as Madam is."

Sayo smiled shakily back at her. Madam, upon hearing who would be serving Master lunch, had taken Sayo aside and made quite sure that Sayo understood exactly what she was doing.

"_You are being given a rare privilege, one you do not deserve. You should be grateful that circumstances have conspired to put you in this situation, and you should understand: Ushiromiya Kinzo _is_ the Ushiromiya family. You owe him not only your respect, but your reverence. If you fail in your duties in any way, I _will_ hear of it. Do you understand, Shannon?"_

"_Y-yes, Madam."_

Master had much more elaborate tastes than Genji-sama, as evidenced by his lunch, though then again, Sayo doubted that there was time to put as much effort into the preparation of food meant for servants. There were for appetizers sliced ciabatta bread drizzled with olive oil, a light salad adorned with crumbled feta cheese, bell peppers, cucumbers and black olives, and piping hot fasolada, which, Sayo had made sure to find out, was a Greek soup made with tomatoes and many other vegetables. The entrée was bowtie pasta with basil pesto, and baked lamb in some sort of yogurt mint sauce, along with other spices such as garlic, rosemary, oregano and black pepper. The dessert was baked apples served with hot bourbon bread pudding and vanilla ice cream; that would be sent up later, if Master wished for it. Kawano-san had as usual spared no expense on Master's meal (The rest of the family was eating relatively plainer fare).

The delicious aroma that rose up from beneath the cloche covers only served to remind Sayo of how hungry she was. Except with breakfast, it really wasn't considered proper for the servants to eat before the family. Depending on how long it took to prepare and serve the meal, and how long it took for the family and any guests to eat the meal, Sayo might not eat lunch until two or three in the afternoon, and not eat supper until nine or even ten at night. It was only noon. Sayo's lunchtime was still quite a ways off. She would have gladly eaten all of this right now, if it was her place to do so, but how much of it would Master even eat? He had been known to even send back whole meals untouched, refusing to eat so much as a mouthful, much to Kawano-san's distress. Kawano-san and Genji-sama usually ended up eating the discarded meal themselves.

When they reached the study, Kumasawa-san stepped forwards and knocked on the heavy door. For the first time, Sayo noticed the shape of a scorpion engraved into the doorknob. _I wonder why that's there_. "Master!" Kumasawa-san called through the door. "Shannon and I are here with your dinner."

There was a long moment of silence to follow. Sayo wondered if perhaps Master had changed his mind about having lunch and was torn between feeling sorry for Kawano-san's wasted effort and feeling relieved that she might be spared the possibility of embarrassing herself in front of Master himself. But all too soon, she heard Master's deep, gravelly voice through the wood. "Come in, then."

At that, Kumasawa-san put the key she had borrowed from Genji-sama into the lock and turned it; Sayo head some surprisingly heavy mechanisms click before the door slowly creaked open. Kumasawa-san went in first, Sayo following close behind with the trolley laden down with food.

Sayo had never been in Master's study before. Out of all of the servants, Genji-sama and Kumasawa-san were the only ones permitted to come inside to clean it. Even the family was rarely allowed inside, and Doctor Nanjo was probably the only guest on the island who had _ever_ been allowed inside. Sayo had always wondered what it looked like inside. Renon and Benon had liked to spread rumors that Master performed horrible experiments upon the living inside; Master had such a reputation as an occult inamorato that no one would have entirely put it past him.

But as for Sayo's first impression?

Sayo's first impression was one of wonder; she had ample opportunity to look around the study as Kumasawa-san cleared off Master's very cluttered desk. The book archive in the mansion was a proper library, a large room devoted entirely to books. There were hundreds, possibly of thousands of books in the archive. Master's study didn't have as many books in it as the book archive did, but at the same time, the study gave the archive a good run for his money. There were bookshelves all around, reaching all the way up to the high ceiling, some twenty feet above; the higher shelves were accessible only by use of a rolling ladder attached to the book shelves. The books were of all shapes and sizes—some small, some large, some paperback, some hardback, their spines of all colors possible—but most were large, leather-bound tomes packed tightly into the shelves. Sayo's hands itched to take one of the books down off the shelves and read it. She suspected that she could spend her whole life here, reading, and not finish all the books that were present here.

What she noticed next was the air of neglect around the study. Though Kinzo did occasionally allow Genji-sama or Kumasawa-san to come in and clean, it was apparently not nearly often enough. There were stains in the rugs that sat over the hardwood floors; Sayo wasn't sure what they were, but judging from the reddish color, they might have been wine stains. There was also a noticeable layer of dust over the bookshelves and any other flat surfaces. Sayo's eyebrows shot up momentarily, before she remembered that it wasn't her place to judge Master, but still, she couldn't help but wonder at the fact that Master was willing to spend his days in a place with so much dust.

As she looked around more, Sayo began to realize something else. There was a well-cushioned sofa and a few chairs with matching red and gold-brocaded upholstery sitting opposite it, with a low coffee table in between. When she craned her neck and looked off to the side, she saw a bed large enough for a grown man, and a shower curtain nearby. A door was hanging slightly open; Sayo saw what she was sure was a toilet behind it. _Master's study is practically its own house, _she thought, thunderstruck. _No wonder he can stay in here for days at a time. All he needs is for Genji-sama to bring him food, and he doesn't have to leave at all._

Sayo's observations were cut short when Kumasawa-san returned to the trolley. "Bring the soup, Shannon," she told her, taking the bread and salad out from under the cloche covers and setting them down on the desk in front of Master.

Sayo grimaced as she took the bowl of fasolada from the trolley, watching little wisps of steam rising from the bowl. She had never been good with liquids; anything larger than a teacup that wasn't set firmly on a solid surface ended up spilled on the ground most of the times. There was one time when Sayo was helping Sanon while she mopped the bathrooms on the second floor by carrying around the bucket of soapy water she was mopping with. Sayo would never forget how mad Sanon and Madam were when she accidentally tipped the bucket over and spilled all of the water not only on the bathroom floor but on the bedroom carpeting as well. The only mercy of that situation was that it had been an unoccupied guest bedroom.

_I'll just have to be very careful_, Sayo told herself. _I can do that. Shannon is right here beside me, cheering me on. I'll just have to be careful, and walk slowly. I can do that. I just have to impress one man—one man who could fire me if he wanted, but still, Master is only one man. Eva-sama isn't here to mock me. Madam is not here to scold me at the slightest misstep. Besides, Kumasawa-san told me that Master isn't as strict with us servants as Madam. She wasn't lying to me. Was she? …No… No, of course she wasn't. Kumasawa-san would never lie to me._

_If nothing else, this is good training for being married to Battler-san. _She smiled a little, feeling more confident. _I'll get better and better carrying bowls of soup, and by the time we're married I'll be so good at this that I won't drop or spill anything at all when I'm setting the table. "Wow, Sayo-chan," he'll say. "It all comes so naturally to you."_

Suddenly, Kinzo snorted in amusement. "Well, Shannon?" he asked her dryly. "Are you planning on serving me that soup for lunch or for supper?"

Sayo felt her face flush, as all of her newfound confidence rushed away from her as quickly as it had come. Master was laughing at her. The first words he had ever spoken directly to her, and he was laughing at her. She really was pathetic. "S-sorry, sir."

She made a conscious effort to both speed up and be as careful with the fasolada as she had been when she was walking slowly. Unfortunately, she could do one or the other, but not both. Sayo failed to notice a large bump in the rug until it was too late.

"Ow!" When she tripped, the bowl was knocked out of her hands, scalding hot soup spilling on her fingers and all over her feet and the rug. Sayo whimpered as she looked at her fingers. They were already beginning to turn bright, cherry-red. Her feet felt like they were on fire…

"Oh, dear!" Kumasawa-san exclaimed, rushing to Sayo's side. "Take off your socks, Shannon! I'll go get some cold water and bandages. Master…" She looked back up at Master, her lined brow knit.

Master waved a hand dismissively. "Have the girl sit on the sofa, if you're so worried."

Kumasawa-san patted the back of Sayo's hand, only to draw back when the girl flinched—there were a few red spots there, too. "Just wait here, Shannon; go sit on the sofa for now. I'll be right back," she promised.

Sayo did as she was told, and apart from the clink of silverware on china plates, there was silence.

She had messed up, badly. It was as though Sayo was little again and the four older girls had cornered after some mishap, mocking her and calling her 'Yasu.' Manon never did anything like that but that girl was so two-faced that Sayo was sure she'd be sniggering behind her hand at her once she found out about this.

Genji-sama would be so disappointed in her. Hadn't he told Sayo to do her best? A bowl of spilled soup all over what was probably a _very_ expensive rug was about as far from her 'best' as possible.

Madam would be furious with her. She barely seemed to need a reason to be furious with Sayo, but this was something that even a far gentler person than Madam would have been angry about. To Madam, who had never truly wanted Sayo here, this would be all the proof she needed that Sayo had to leave.

She could lose her job over this. If that happened, Sayo would be sent back to the Fukuin House in disgrace, proving Runon and Renon and Sanon and Benon right when they all said that Sayo didn't belong there, with them. She would be a laughingstock and a black mark of shame on the Fukuin House's reputation, the first child sent to the Ushiromiya family in over ten years to be fired from her post. Worst of all, she would never see Battler again; how would he know to look for her there?

Her hands and feet hurt so much. They stung and screamed with the slightest movement. Sayo's shame and pain made her eyes prickle and burn, her breath catching in her throat. _I mustn't cry. I am still in Master's presence. I'm an embarrassing-enough person without becoming emotional in Master's presence. _But those words couldn't prevent hot, fat tears from dribbling down her cheeks. Sayo wiped furiously at her face with her sleeve, biting her lip so hard that it bled to keep from sobbing.

The clatter of metal on metal seemed unnaturally loud. Sayo's head snapped up, to see Master rooting through the trolley, presumably looking for the entrée—the appetizers, especially minus the fasolada, were small enough that he could presumably get through them in a short amount of time. At the very moment that he found the pasta and the lamb, though she wished she hadn't, Sayo managed to catch his gaze. She averted her eyes, but instead, she found her gaze drawn inexorably to the overturned bowl still sitting on the rug, the vegetables splattered on top, and an unmistakable red stain beginning to set in—after that, her gaze was drawn to the little red trail, telltale marks of where her feet had touched the rug while walking towards the sofa. "I-I'm very sorry," she mumbled.

"You know, I never liked that rug," Master remarked, in an astonishingly casual tone of voice. Sayo stared at him, amazed and apprehensive at the same time. She had never heard Master speak so casually before. "It was a wedding gift from my wife's family," he explained, as he took the entrée back to the desk and began to eat. "I suspect it was meant to mock the way my predecessors made their fortune. And now it has met its end in the only possible appropriate way."

Sayo had no idea what to say to this. She stared, huge-eyed, at Master, shrinking into the back of the sofa as she did so. _What is this about?_

"Don't give me that dejected face," he told her sardonically. "If you think it's going to make me feel sorry for you, you're wrong. Even with all the magic in the world, you can't undo anything you've done. You're better off if you just accept that now."

Sayo nodded. Master didn't know that her most cherished dream was teetering on the edge of a precipice, even as he spoke. How could he know? There was no one Sayo could confide in. Even if she could tell him, a man like him would undoubtedly find her dreams pitifully small. "I—"

Just then, Kumasawa-san returned with a basin full of water, a roll of bandages wrapped around her arm and several cloths in hand. She smiled shakily at Sayo. "Now, just hold very still, Shannon. I'll wash your feet first, alright?"

"Al-alright, Kumasawa-san."

Sayo would be lying if she said she didn't feel a little better when Kumasawa-san gently rubbed her feet down. The cloths, little towels she had likely gotten from the servants' station on the third floor, were soft instead of being abrasive like terrycloth, and the water was very cold. When her burned skin was wetted down and cleaned of fasolada, the pain dissipated for a moment, her skin numbing. Sayo almost couldn't believe Kumasawa-san when she murmured that Sayo had only been scalded; it had hurt so much.

While Kumasawa-san was washing Sayo's feet clean of fasolada and checking to see how bad the burns—or scalds, rather—were, Master must have grown curious, because he set his meal aside and wandered over to where Sayo and Kumasawa-san were. He watched the goings-on with bemusement, but when his gaze reached Sayo's scalded feet, he began looking at her very oddly indeed. Master's stare was so intent and intense that Sayo began to feel as though her entire body had been scalded instead of just her feet and her fingers. She looked away from him, hoping he would lose interest and go back to his lunch.

"Shannon." Sayo forced herself to meet Master's gaze. His stare had, if anything, become even more disconcerting; there was almost something _manic_ about the gleam in his eyes. "What are those marks on the sides of your feet?"

Sayo stared down at her feet, red and scalded (but now clean of fasolada, at least) as they were. It took her a moment to realize that Master wasn't talking about the scald marks; perhaps if she was less nervous, she would have realized right away, but oh well. He was, instead, referring to the marks on the sides of her feet, the small ridges of tough flesh near the base of her small toes. "I… They're birth marks, sir," she mumbled. "That was what the Director of the Fukuin House told me." And to be honest, Sayo hadn't thought much about them since then. It was just something about her body, something she couldn't change, just like everything else.

Master made an odd noise in the back of his throat. "Are you sure that's what they are?"

Sayo opened her mouth to speak, but surprisingly, Kumasawa-san cut her off. "I see no reason why they should be anything other than what Shannon says they are, Master." Sayo gaped at her, shocked. She had never heard Kumasawa-san speak so hostilely before, let alone to a member of the Ushiromiya family.

Sayo turned her gaze on master apprehensively, not only for her own sake, but for Kumasawa-san's as well. Who knew what Master would do, when spoken to in such a way? What had possessed Kumasawa-san to talk like that?

There was a tense moment when Master and Kumasawa-san stared intently at one another, the former seeming thoughtful and the later still radiating hostility. To Sayo's great amazement (and no small concern), it was Master who looked away first. "Very well. Shannon, once your burns—" he must not have heard Kumasawa-san earlier "—are treated, you may leave."

Sayo nodded quickly. "Yes, sir!" She felt relief and shame commingle in her stomach in her stomach; the result was faintly nauseating.

"And Kumasawa, you stay here and clean up the mess."

Kumasawa-san frowned slightly, but only said, quietly, "If that's what you want."

As Sayo left the study and started to head for the servants' staircase, she didn't know whether to feel embarrassed that Kumasawa-san had to try to clean up her mess, or relieved that she didn't have to deal with Master looking at her so strangely anymore.

-0-0-0-

"Hey, Shannon, I hear you spilled my fasolada."

Sometimes, Sayo wished she wasn't such a slave to routine. She wasn't even hungry anymore, not after that debacle in Master's study, so there was no point in coming to the kitchen. She should have just waited in the break room until her lunch break was over. And yet, she had come to the kitchen anyways, her feet practically moving of their own accord.

There was another reason she shouldn't have come to the kitchen.

Sayo couldn't remember ever having had a personal conversation with Kawano-san. He had given her and the other servants food often enough—he cooked their meals as well as the family's. But Kawano-san had never been very interested in Sayo, or indeed in anything that went on outside of the kitchen or the dining hall.

Kawano-san was a physically unimpressive man. He was fairly short (much shorter than Master or Krauss-sama or Genji-sama, though still taller than the likes of Sayo), in his left fifties, with short-cropped gray hair, and a face that seemed permanently set in an expression of irritation, even when he was smiling at the family. When Sayo thought of him, she thought that he would probably grow angry with her easily, so she endeavored to stay out of his way and not trouble him as much as possible. However, it seemed like she couldn't even manage that.

Leaning against the countertop, his arms folded across his chest, Kawano-san raised an eyebrow at her. "Well?"

Sayo felt her cheeks burning. "I'm very sorry," she mumbled.

He snorted. "Typical. I slave over the pot all morning, meanwhile doing a thousand different things at once, and my beautiful soup ends up on the floor before Master can even taste it."

_It's not my fault!_ The anger of that thought was nothing short of ugly, and, to be honest, quite childish. Even in Sayo's head it had a grating whine to it. If she had ever said it aloud, anyone would tell her that she was being pathetic. Anyone would tell her that.

In a flurry of golden butterflies, Beatrice materialized at Kawano-san's side. She spared a disdainful glance for him, flicking a lock of gleaming white hair behind her shoulder. Then, Beatrice looked at Sayo and smiled slyly. "I think he needs to be taught a lesson, don't you?"

"Maybe," Sayo whispered.

"What was that?"

With a start, Sayo remembered herself. Her face felt like it really was on fire now. She hadn't meant to say anything out loud. "N-nothing."

"…Right." Kawano-san was still eyeing her oddly; Sayo wished she could tell him to stop. "…Your burns aren't bad, are they?" he asked her abruptly.

The idea of Kawano-san (of anyone she hadn't made herself) being concerned about her was another shock in a day full of shocks. "I… Well, I…" Sayo stammered. _In this a trick? _"Kumasawa-san says I was only scalded," she managed finally.

Kawano-san grimaced. "So I noticed."

Yes, the bandages on Sayo's hands and feet should have been quite conspicuous, especially considering that her socks were probably in the laundry by now. Sayo needed to go back to her room before her lunch break was up; Madam wouldn't be pleased if she saw her out of uniform.

"Yeah, I've ended up like that before," Kawano-san went on. "You've got your sleeves rolled up, you reach across the pot and you've forgotten all about the steam. Yeah, I've been there. Not fun."

Sayo didn't respond, afraid that if she did, he'd go back to mocking her.

"And if it's any consolation, lunch didn't go so great down here, either."

That piqued Sayo's curiosity, prompting her against her better judgment to speak. "How so?"

"Hah! Typical day, really," Kawano-san said bitterly. "You know the type."

Sayo nodded silently. She slipped back into the more familiar (though not necessarily more comfortable) role of the listener. Once again, all she had to do was listen. No one expected her to participate. No one wanted her to participate.

"Krauss-sama's the only one who ever actually _compliments_ my food when the rest of the family isn't breathing down their necks. Half the time Jessica-sama just picks at it; no appreciation at all, and she hasn't' even got the honesty to admit she doesn't want any. Madam's gotta be the worst, though. Spoiled princess thinks it takes five minutes to make this stuff, thinks she can ask me to make it again as many times as she likes if it doesn't suit her." Sayo squirmed a bit to hear Madam referred to as a 'spoiled princess', but said nothing.

"Well, she pulled that shit—" Sayo squirmed once more "—again today. You know the quiche I made?" She nodded. Kawano-san squirmed darkly. "_Somebody_ thought it had too much onion—Madam had to pick today of all days to actually care enough to taste the food before I send it out—and made me make it again. So I did; you know it's no use arguing with her." Sayo certainly didn't know anyone else among the servants who would argue with Madam on a matter that wasn't life and death. "Only _this_ time, she thought there was too much hot sauce, she says I'm gonna have to make it again.

"One problem; there wasn't enough crab left to make the quiche again. And _then_…" Kawano-san's face became extremely red. "…_Then_, the spoiled princess has the fucking nerve to get mad at _me_! It was all I could do not to tell her that if she wants fucking gourmet for breakfast, lunch and dinner, she needs to expect ingredient shortages, and also she's gonna have to cook it herself; I like having a job too much to actually say that. So I sent out the second quiche, and God did she bitch about it, but she let me serve it. And guess what _we're _having for lunch and dinner?"

"Quiche?"

Kawano-san pointed her finger at her and nodded. "Got it in one. Joke's on Madam, too; first one tasted better. Speaking of, do you want any quiche, Shannon?"

Sayo shook her head, trying to edge out of the room. "Oh, no thank you. I don't really have much of an appetite today, I'm afraid," she said quickly, before Kawano-san could accuse her of not wanting to try it.

"Well, I hope you have an appetite for _this_, at least." Kawano-san reached behind him and pulled out a glass bowl filled with vanilla ice cream, bread pudding and baked apples.

"But that's—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Master called and said to give it to you. Old man must've felt sorry for you, or something."

Sayo eyed the bowl warily. She didn't know what the penalty for eating food meant for the family was, but she suspected that Madam considered it a cardinal sin, especially where Master's food was concerned. Though she knew that accusing Kawano-san of lying would not go over well, Sayo couldn't just accept this at face value. "Are you sure that's what Master said?" she asked skeptically.

Kawano-san shrugged. "You could hardly mistake him." He thrust the bowl at her. "Look, if Master's not gonna eat it, _someone's _got to. May as well be you, if that's what he wants."

At last, Sayo accepted the bowl from him, though she still thought the whole thing a dubious affair. The older girls had never tried to get her in trouble by telling her she could eat something she really couldn't, but probably only because that would have reflected badly on them. It would reflect badly on Kawano-san too, but he didn't seem to care as much about the family's good opinion.

He was looking at her intently. Sayo sat down at the island with Kawano-san still staring at her. As she dipped the spoon into the bread pudding, Sayo wished she had enough of a spine to refuse. It would be the low point of an already horrible day if Kawano-san turned out to be playing a trick on her. "I would certainly need to teach him a lesson then," Beatrice agreed.

_It… It's good._

Sayo had never had bread pudding before. Apples were one of the many fruits handed out to the children of the Fukuin House as treats, and Sayo had always been given an ice cream sandwich on her birthday, same as the rest, but she wasn't used to rich, exotic foods. They were not for the likes of her, not while she worked for the Ushiromiya family as their servant.

The bread pudding was rich and dense; like the baked apples, it had a distinct taste of cinnamon. The contrast of the warm apples and bread pudding with the vanilla ice cream was a pleasant one, even on a chilly day such as this when the house was drafty and Sayo spent much of her workday wishing she could huddle by a space heater.

But food like this wasn't for the likes of her, so when she finished, she thanked Kawano-san and told herself not to wish for any more.

-0-0-0-

Over the next few days, Sayo went through her workday on tenterhooks, waiting for the moment when Madam would call her aside to harangue her for her accident in Master's study. After all, Madam saw the dignity of the head of the Ushiromiya family as inviolate. Anything that tainted the head's dignity, even by association alone, had to be expunged. But though Sayo imagined that Madam was glaring rather more darkly at her than before, none of the punishment she'd feared ever came.

-0-0-0-

Sayo was aware that Master liked to take walks on the mansion grounds and beyond. Renon used to joke that he would jump from the window of his study at midnight and fly around the island conducting obscene rituals to resurrect the Witch, Beatrice. Everyone did at least agree that Master was fond of his late night and early morning walks, that he had stepped out at these late hours to avoid running into anyone else, and just what he was doing out there was probably suspect.

More seriously, there was a simple protocol that a servant was to observe if they came upon Master during one of his rambling walks. They were to bow low, say "Good afternoon" or "Good morning", and not say anything more unless Master addressed them. It was a simple rule, simple enough that even Sayo could follow it without any trouble. She had had to do so maybe three times in her tenure as a servant of the Ushiromiya family—Master was quite determined to avoid everyone else when he set out from the mansion. Never before had Master so much as acknowledged her presence.

Today, however, was different. While working in the rose garden, shivering against the cold, Sayo spied Master approaching her, flanked by Kumasawa-san and Genji-sama, the latter of whom carried a long, rectangular black case in his arms. Sayo dipped in a bow, but was barely able to open her mouth before Master instructed her to follow them.

"Genji-sama, Kumasawa-san, where are we going?" Sayo whispered as they followed Master out of the rose garden at a respectful distance behind.

To her deep consternation, neither one of them answered her. Kumasawa-san only shook her head at her, and Genji-sama didn't even acknowledge that he had heard her. Sayo wrung her apron in her hands, trying to ignore the churning in her stomach. She hoped that this wasn't about the soup she had spilled last week (At least she had finally been able to take her bandages off, so there wasn't a physical reminder of her accident). In retrospect, Master had not seemed terribly angry about it. If he wanted to take her to task over it and punish her, he would have called her into his study instead of bidding her follow him into… the woods? And surely he would have done so before now. Still, the utter lack of anything resembling an explanation put her on edge.

Sayo's initial impression proved correct. The four of them strayed from the well-manicured lawn of the mansion grounds and started down a narrow, winding path into the forest. Sayo stared in wonder at her surroundings, regularly having to duck and dance out of the way of branches to keep from being scratched or ending up with her clothes caught on briars or tree limbs.

In the eyes of most, a forest was just a forest, even if it was a wild, uncultivated forest like this one. Even finding a path they had never seen before wouldn't have been all that exciting. But no one who had ever lived or worked (or both) on Rokkenjima could claim to be indifferent to the island's forest. Two generations of the family and several work-generations of servants had been brought up on tales of the Witch who haunted the forest and would curse anyone foolish enough to disrespect her name or violate her domain. There was always the story of the servant who had fallen from the cliffs just beyond the boundary of the forest and died; rumors abounded that she had disrespected the Witch of the Forest.

Even Sayo couldn't be indifferent to the forest. It was true that she had adopted the mantle of the Witch, Beatrice; Beatrice was a character Sayo played. (Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of white; in her ear, she heard a whispery voice say, "Don't discount me just yet.") She was not the real Witch, as much as it galled her to admit as much (And as much as she questioned just what 'made' a 'real' Witch). As such, Sayo didn't know if the idea of there being a real spirit-Witch living in the forest elated or terrified her. How would such a person react to Sayo's use of her name?

(She thought it must have been a very lonely sort of existence.)

Whether or not there was really a spirit-Witch living in the forest, Sayo never saw her. Master led the three servants to a sunlit clearing, frost gleaming on dead leaves lying in the shade. Sayo looked around and blinked, surprised, when she saw a brightly-colored red, yellow and white bull's-eye tacked onto a tree.

Genji-sama walked to Master's side and held the case out to him. "Thank you, my friend," Master said, actually smiling briefly at Genji-sama. Sayo stiffened when she saw what was inside the case.

A gun.

"Master likes to take target practice on crisp mornings like this," Kumasawa-san explained.

"Then why are we…"

"Master also likes to have an audience when he takes target practice."

"Of course." Master laughed loudly and Sayo jumped; she promptly slid partially behind Kumasawa-san. "I know no one who doesn't prefer to have onlookers in such a competitive pursuit."

"Hmm."

Genji-sama stepped back, and Sayo stepped out from behind Kumasawa-san to stand between them; she supposed that there was no point in trying to hide. If Master wanted an audience while he practiced his aim, Sayo supposed that that was something even she could do without too much trouble.

Sayo flinched when Master fired the gun. Was gunfire really so loud? It was never this loud in movies with guns in them, and a lot of the mystery novels she had read behaved as though someone could shoot someone in one part of a house without anyone else in the same house hearing. Sayo did remember a few books where the hero heard gunfire and went running, but not many. Master fired the gun again and Sayo flinched once more, having to fight with herself to keep from covering her ears. She had never been fond of loud noises; even thunder bothered if it was too unexpected.

Master finally stopped after he had fired six rounds into the target, and apparently needed to reload the gun; Sayo's ears were ringing. Sayo craned her head around him as he loaded more bullets into the gun, and her eyes widened slightly. All of the holes in the target were either in the circle in the middle of the target, or in the ring closest to it. _Wow, Master's a really good shot_.

Genji-sama and Kumasawa-san clapped politely, Sayo hastily following their lead. "That's incredible," she murmured, still directing her gaze at the target.

A surprisingly soft laugh drew her attention back to Master. "Would you like to learn how, then?" he asked, holding the gun towards her.

Sayo threw her hands up. "What?! Oh, no, I couldn't, I—"

Kumasawa-san nudged her gently. "Master never lets anyone but Genji-san handle his guns, Shannon. Not even Krauss-sama or the rest of his family are allowed to touch them." She was smiling, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes, which were dark and even a little anxious. "It's a great honor."

Sayo bit her lip. "Y-yes, then. Thank you, sir." It really wouldn't do for her to anger Master. If he wanted to show her favor like this, she was no one to refuse. But still, _why_?

"Now, Shannon, are you right- or left-handed?" Master asked once Sayo was standing next to him.

"Right-handed, Master."

"Oh? That's good. I suspect it would be more difficult for me to teach you how to hold this correctly if you were left-handed. This is a pump-action shotgun, Shannon—a sawed-off Winchester 1897 model."

"Umm, sir? What's a pump-action shotgun? And what do you mean by 'sawed-off'?"

None of the novels Sayo read ever went into all that much detail about guns. Sayo knew the difference between a handgun and a shotgun and a rifle, and knew a little bit about different models. A Winchester model would be connected to that woman who had lived in America. She had thought that ghosts had taken the lives of her husband and child as revenge for their own deaths at the hand of the guns the former had made, and had constructed a sprawling house with countless winding hallways and fake staircases and doors that led to nowhere in order to avoid the same fate. (Sayo both enjoyed the tale and thought it tragic. She assigned the former trait to Beatrice, and the latter to Shannon.) That was the most she knew about Winchester guns.

Far from being irritated with her questions, Master nodded mildly. "Good, you show curiosity. A pump-action shotgun is a sort of shotgun that has a handgrip that can be pumped back and forth to eject a spent round of ammunition and load a fresh one. A sawed-off shotgun has had its barrel shortened, and sometimes the stock—" he patted the butt of the gun "—will be gone too."

He pressed the gun into her hands. "Put your left hand under the barrel; you'll fire the gun with your right. Don't clench the shotgun," he counseled her, and Sayo relaxed her grip on the gun. _Please forgive me, but I don't think I can relax holding this thing_. "Now, put the gun up against your shoulder, tight. There will be a recoil when you fire the gun; if you don't have it flush against your shoulder, it will bounce, and that will hurt a great deal."

"O-okay. Now what?"

"Your body should be turned towards the target. Position your feet so that they're about as far apart from each other as the width of your shoulders."

"Okay."

"Aim."

"Okay."

"Now fire."

For some reason, the roar of gunfire wasn't quite as piercing or startling when Sayo herself was the one firing the gun. Perhaps it was because she was the one firing the gun and she was the one controlling when the roar would come. It… Sayo paused. It felt like it had when she had used 'magic' for the first time and took Berune's key, with electricity crackling in her veins and the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing on end. Practically speaking, firing a gun was nothing like using magic, but she was blessed with the same sense of _power_. Sayo would have been lying if she said she did not enjoy it. She was only shocked by how _much_ she enjoyed it.

However, any feelings of enjoyment or satisfaction left her quite abruptly when she saw where the bullet she fired had landed. It had only hit the outermost ring on the target.

_That's… wonderful. I can't even shoot a gun all that well._

Master clapped her on the shoulder. "Don't get discouraged, Shannon," he told her encouragingly. "You've done much better than I did my first time already. When I first started at this it took me more than a week of practice before I could even land a blow on the target itself. Try again."

"Yes, sir."

Master moved away from her; out of the corner of her eye, Sayo saw him go over to Genji-sama. She lifted the gun again, running all of Master's instructions through her head. This time, when she fired, the bullet was on the line between the outermost ring and the second ring from the edge of the target. The next time she fired, the result was much the same.

Three more times Sayo fired the shotgun, before she ran out of ammunition. The best she managed was to hit the third ring from the edge of the target, but it seemed a bit more respectable than the first time she had fired.

Sayo wheeled around on the balls of her feet. "Did you see how…" She trailed off.

Kumasawa-san was sitting on a log, watching Master and Genji-sama. Master was chuckling under his breath about something. Genji-sama stood very stiffly, his face strained and set. The air around them felt charged.

As one, the three of them turned their eyes on her. Sayo clenched the gun in her hands, careful to keep the barrel pointed away from her and them. She paused, unsure of what to say in the face of this. It was Master who broke the silence, peering over her head at the target. "Ah, very good. If you wish, we shall return here next week. You'll need more practice if you want to improve your aim."

"Oh… Thank you, sir. I… think I would like that."

Sayo pushed all questions of just why Master was showing her favor like this (something she would eventually come to regret), and smiled brightly at him.


End file.
